





















Glass _ 
BookJ 





a 


1 


u 


A 


I 











lllu0trate^ 


MERicAN Girl 

IN PARIS 

L 

By ALEXANDER DUMAS, FlLs. 



I^ONOI^X_J E^, HENI'I E^BECRR^Y «& CO., F*ut>lislners, 

407-42^ Dea?'born Street^ CHIC A GO, 


Optimus Series No. 8. August, 1891. Issued Monthly. Subscription Price, $6.00 per year. Katered at 

Chicago P. O. as Second-Class Matter. 


PHARAOH'S TREASURE, 

12mo, 355 Pages. Paper Cover. 


A DYING EGYPTIAN g'rjes into the custody of an adventnrous young 
Afnerican a manuscript which the Egyptian had found in a tomb i^i 
Egypt, a?id which manuscript the Egyptiayi decla'»'ed was to have made him 
fabulously rich, had he lived to unravel its secret. 

This 7nanuscfipt beco??ies the means of opening up to the eyes of the reader 
marvelous and startling discoveries in the rocky chambers of the pyramids and of 
bi'eathing the breath of life into the zurinkled mummies of men and ivomen who 
lived and loved and languished in the palmy days of Egyptian grandeur . 

That was a more voluptuous age, and its men and women of a more sensuous 
race than ours, and the author has pictured the passionate scenes of love and hate 
accordingly. 

The heroine of the story, Athene, is a lovely and lovable character. She had 
the misfortune to be -loved at the same time by the king, the king'' s son and the 
king' s brother , and to be intensely hated and plotted against by the king's brother s 
sweetheart — the beautiful but too passionate Uarta, the Mur s daughter. 

The story is full from cover to cover of thrilling adventures , marvelous 
revelations and passionate scenes of love and hatred. 

While Pharaoh's Treasure is perfectly unique in its chai'acter, it smacks some- 
what of the zveird nature of Rider Haggard' s “ She" and Jule Verne's ‘'Around 
the World in Eighty Days." 

For sale by all Booksellers and Newsdealers, or will be sent by tbe 
Publishers on receipt of Price. , 




DONOHUE, HENNE3ERR.Y & CO., Publishers, 
407 to 425 Dearborn Street, CHICAGO. 


THE 


AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS. 


A NOVEL 

OF 

AFFECTION AND FASHIONABLE LIFE. 


FR^ T] 


FROM THE FRENCH OF 


ALEXANDER^DUMAS, THE YOUNGER. 



TRANSLATED BY 

H. LLEWELLYN WILLIAMS. 



CHICAGO: 

DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO. 
1891 . 


2 ^ 600 



DONOHUE & HENNEBERRT, 
Printers and Binders, 
CHICAGO. 




THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


CHAPTER I 

WHAT IS WEALTH WITHOUT LOVE TO SHARE IT? 

It was a delightful May day when a young gentle- 
man, coming direct from Havre, where he had disem- 
barked from the Atlantic steamship, snatched a break- 
fast impatiently at the Great Western Terminus, and 
disdaining the cabs, hastened to stroll the boulevard 
asphalt, which is the native soil for true Parisians 
such as he. 

Lucien Gerard was a son of the streets, having been 
found as a babe in the doorway of a store of the Rue 
St. Denis; but on learning that the storekeeper had 
the intention to retain the child as a kind of talis- 
man, the mother had come forward. It was not a 
child of shame, only of poverty. Touched by her story, 
old Maroizel had gone farther in philanthropy than he 
had projected, and taken Madame Gerard under his 
roof. On the other hand, he gained in all directions 
by his charity; never was there a servant more devoted 
than the mother of Gerard, while, burning to repay 
her benefactor, she studied to make herself more and 
•vinore valuable. When his head salesman, Mauriceau, 

7 


8 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


from the increase of the business, displaced her as 
book-keeper, she resigned herself to being his daugh- 
ter’s governess; the same learning which enabled her 
to educate the girl, served to fit her own son for a 
promising career. 

As Catherine Mauriceau was the child of MaroizePs 
partner’s daughter, Madame Gerard was only contin- 
uing in a direct line to pay her debt of gratitude; it 
was natural too, that she should build a castle in the 
air in which were to be united the young people, her 
son and Catherine. But she soon dismissed the" idea. 
The world of Paris moved rapidly under the Empire 
in the trading center; on the death of Maroizel, his 
son-indaw, long since the piston-rod of the busi- 
ness, altered the gloomy store, dispensed with the 
haggling petty housewives’ commerce and revolu- 
tionized the old routine. Already he had bought 
the adjoining property, running round into the 
Boulevard St. Denis, and one of those dry-goods pal- 
aces glittered and attracted not only the fashionable 
lights of the better part of the town but those for- 
eigners who come to pour unstinted riches into the lap 
of insatiable Lutetia, Nothing remained of the Mar- 
oizel establishment but the old sign, the Three Sul- 
tanas, which Mauriceau, although too hard-headed to 
be superstitious like his predecessor, had sacredly pre- 
served and had built into the Caen stone front of his 
magnificent Universal Emporium. 

Long before this, Gerard had quitted the harbor of 
his youth. 

Mauriceau had continued the tradition of being the 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


9 


Gerard’s helping hand; he had stooped to employ his 
business tact in following up some of the tangled 
affairs of M. Gerard, deceased, with a suspicion of 
having walked into the Seine at Courbevoie, to avoid 
the inquiries of the Tribunal of Commerce, and the 
sharp clerk who had grasped the Maroizel scepter had 
brought two or three vulpine creditors to book, after 
they had laughed at Madame Gerard. With these 
scraps from the wreck, she had completed the train- 
ing of her son, who entered the Polytechnic School, 
where he distinguished himself. Indeed, his mother 
was more than a little proud of him when he came 
home in the neat uniform. There was another who 
saw him with admiring eyes — Catherine who had, 
from the same teacher having guided their first steps, 
regarded him as a brothero 

But Mauriceau, with the expansion of his business, 
had an elevation of his ambition, if not as mattered 
to himself as concerned the daughter of whom he had 
good reason to be proud. He clearly saw that the 
girl was overcome with a passionate longing for Lu« 
cien, and while he acknowledged that the young mau 
was in brains and physique not a match to be despised, 
he was now a millionaire, and he could not see any 
fair counterpoise to money-bags but in a peer’s coronet. 
He blamed himself for having let the intimacy of the 
young people continue, and that, since Madame Gerard 
had remained in M. Mauriceau’s dwelling as the young 
lady’s instructress, the four took meals together. 

It was imprudent, and the man who owed the foun- 
dation of his important fortune to winning his master’s 


lO 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


daughter, began to fear that he was being undermined 
in the same way. On seeing that the course of love, 
whether true or mercenary, was running too smooth, 
he hastened to throw a dam across. He had a solemn 
debate with Gerard, who instantly recognized that the 
rich merchant-prince’s arguments were unanswerable 
from the worldly point, and promised not merely to 
cease his dangerous visits but to offer the only guar- 
antee possible of his sincere intention not to pain the^ 
man who had inherited the position of Gerard’s patron, 
by exiling himself from the country. Scarcely out of 
his teens, but possessing a certificate of the Govern- 
ment School of Mining, which would provide him 
with a good income anywhere in the Americas, Lucien 
took his leave of all. 

Madame Gerard, who had naturally, but uncon- 
sciously, lent her aid to the sentimental friendship 
of the young people, without thinking of the inevita- 
ble sequel, scorned to sta}^ in the house whence her 
son had been expelled, and, besides, it was logical 
that she should cherish no more love for the man who 
had banished her only son from the country. 

Before Gerard departed from where he left his 
heart, he reflected coolly and without haste on the 
course which would perhaps show the purse-proud 
Mauriceau that the protege of M. Maroizel was not to 
be always despised as the son of the governess who 
sued for the hand of an heiress to twenty millions of 
francs. ^ 

Should he also dip into the grab-bag of commerce 
and accumulate a pile that even a Mai .iceau would 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


II 


not scoff at? He felt that he had not the aptitude, 
for no one better than he, brought up in the sordid 
store where Mauriceau had Jearnt the tricks of trade, 
knew how ignoble were the means by which a lean 
sou is turned into the fat franc. 

The army was open to him, but perhaps the Great 
War would not occur in his time, and meanwhile he 
felt himself composed of finer clay than is fit to per- 
ish in the swamps of Tonquin and the canebrakes of 
Annam. Politics? He was in no humor for jesting: 
the career was not inviting where the Premier of 
Monday is the fugitive in Belgium or Spain of Friday 
or Saturday. 

No, his fate should be sought in the New World, 
where Science is a god, and its votaries can snatch 
golden ingots out of the crucible over her eternal fires. 
What was Mauriceau’s “pile” laboriously gained in 
a life-time, to the discoverer’s, the engineer’s or the 
metallurgist’s share in a Comstock Lead? Lucien 
Gerard kissed his mother good-bye; bade her tell 
the young lady, when they met, to be of good cheer, 
if their hearts only beat in unison, and sailed away 
for the Antipodes. 

Australia had only immaterial treasures for him: on 
his explorations in the deserts and the bush, he wrote 
certain papers which the Academy of Arts and Sciences 
read and complimented him upon, and as a reflec- 
tion of this European verdict, which has a great effect 
abroad, the Colonial Government offered him a post 
tempting if he had been willing to expatriarte himself 
forever.. But Catherine, a Parisian, an expert pianist 


12 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


and vocalist, mistress of four languages, choice and 
yet striking in taste of dress as was inevitable in the 
daughter and granddaughter of dry-goods merchants, 
she would have been thrown away as the wife of the 
State mineralogist of Wallaby-gulch. He renounced 
this brilliant prospect, which caused his few friends 
to deplore that these erratic French have no practical 
qualities, and crossed the sea to hunt for those Gold 
Mines of the Gila which have been the ignis fatuus of 
destruction to hundreds of the daring-souled before 
he was born. There he had found the golden hoard 
of Nature, who, like Fortune lavishes her favors some- 
times on the deserving. 

Enriched, able to enter Paris like a monarch, reju- 
venated, high-mettled by his success, here Lucien 
strode the asphalt like one of those modernized 
Greek gods which are the ideal of the popular romance 
of his era. Travel, hand-to-mouth living, hand-to 
pick labor, the habit of keeping the weather-eye open 
for hostile elements and enemies of his kind more to 
be dreaded, the tropical sun — all he had gone through 
contributed to present him to the gaze, not often 
aroused into fixed attention, of the worn-out caf6 
frequenters in front of the plate-glass lounges, as a 
“type,” a character welcome to their monotonous 
world as a dash of cayenne in an insipid soup. 

His traveling suit showed that he had purchased 
it at the seaport on arrival, but the revelation in his 
alert, vigorous, graceful step of the unrivaled form, 
sufficed to turn aside the censure of the dandies, envy- 
ing robustness which a bath of absinthe would certainly 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


13 


not restore to them. In the quick but searching 
glances from unclouded black eyes, unquenchable 
ardor almost dazzled those who happened to intercept 
them; his black beard, trimmed in a shape which was 
not the imperial relegated to the policemen who still 
imitate the fallen emperor in that point, or that of the 
Americans of the comic stage, revealed the sunburnt 
tint, and had that touch of originality and individu- 
ality at which the boulevardier aims. This air of dis- 
tinction marked the ex-Polytechnic scholar^ and even 
when he invaded the refined region of the opera and 
the Boulevard Hausman, the fops of the first flight 
who chanced to be out on the pavement betimes, 
started as if they beheld a rival for the good graces 
of the ephemeral princess of Cythera. 

Two or three ladies, in stylish carriages, stopping 
before those stores of the Boulevard Malesherbes, 
where objects d’art ostensibly are sold, but where, in 
the sumptuously fitted office, notes of hand are dis- 
counted and money — solid, cold — loaned on the intan- 
gible security of a lovely face or a splendid voice, these 
ladies, surprised out of the studied bearing of ultra- 
English and frigid, unconcerned by this manly appari- 
tion, deigned to honor him with a prolonged stare 
through the monocle set in the handle of their costly 
parasol. 

This was a triumph of its kind, but the Adonis had 
not run the gantlet of the adventuresses of the gam- 
bling-dens of Melbourne and San Francisco and of 
Mexican fandangoes to succumb to the stare of a 
Parisian Phryne, and carelessly walked on. 


14 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

But his pilgrimage, so far unchecked by his meeting 
any acquaintance, was brought to an end half-way up 
the fine promenade by the exclamation of surprise and 
heart-felt pleasure from an elderly gentleman alight- 
ing from a saddle-horse at the carriage-doorway of one 
of the handsome mansions. His groom hastened to 
take the horse away, while the gentleman, fairly 
seizing the young man’s arm as if he feared he would 
escape, drew him into the portals. The deferential 
bow of welcome which the janitor, sticking his long- 
handled feather-duster under his arm in token of re- 
spect, hurriedly gave, denoted that Doctor Ramonin 
was the pride of the house; and these Towers of Babel 
shelter, with their sky-scraping roofs, heaven only 
knows what celebrities to whom even hall-porters do 
reverence. 

The doctor occupied, indeed, the first floor, where 
princes, Brazilian ex-presidents and Argentine hide- 
merchants usually abide, and the pictures, statues, 
and massive furniture strengthened the weight of 
evidence that Lucien Gerard’s old friend had a most 
profitable book of clients in the select classes of the 
Parc Monceau district. 

“Why, my dear doctor,’’ said the new-comer, “you 
must be the electric light of medical science of the 
capital! oh, the luxurious divan for the dainty victim 
of the morphine habit — oh, the commodious curule 
chair in which I suppose you install your somewhat 
rounded form to hear the hypochondriac Croesus: Ah, 
this is an immeasurable distance from the cramped 
cabinet in the Municipal Maison-de-santd only a few 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN EARlS 


15 


doors up in the Rue St. Denis, when old Maroizel 
had the Little Marvel of a bargain-store in the same 
block!” 

Dr. Ramonin was about seventy, but ease of life had 
fought off the usual tokens of age, and one would hesi- 
tate to believe that he was not beginning practice when 
he had brought this hale vivacious young man before^ 
him into the world. His complexion was high, 
thanks to the horseback exercise which he never let 
weather prevent him taking, and though his flesh was 
plainly doomed to master him before he became a 
centenarian, his eyes were bright and kindly though 
of a steely gray, and his smile, on somewhat sensual 
lips, was not forced, but the outward sign of profound 
benevolence. 

He looked upon Gerard with the more joy as he had 
guided his boyish steps toward, the goal which he 
only realized his prevision in attaining. It was 
through him, rather than M. Mauriceau that the youth 
had entered the Polytechnic School, and he had coun- 
seled him to make a special course with a view to 
achieve an independency in the future not too remote. 

“What a great boy you are for twent3^-six, all told!” 
The doctor, having led his friend to sit near him on 
the divan which he had praised at sight and now 
found worth}^ of all praise as a masterpiece of uphol- 
stery. “How your mother and I have followed your 
wanderings through the parts of the world which are 
as fairy-land to those who think Montmartre their 
Mount Everest, and the basin of the Rond-point their 
Lake Nyanza. My eyes, sharpened by my profession, 


l6 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

but getting dimmer, I do not mind telling you, my 
boy, can see that scar under the hair on your temple, 
where the wound was inflicted by the slug of those 
highwaymen of Sonora — the encounter with whom 
interested me in your modest telling it, like a chap- 
ter of the great Fenimore Cooper — you smile, Lu- 
cien? ” 

“Only my rudeness — the fact is that the compat- 
riots of the author in question do not make two syl- 
lables of the first so that he seems the originator of 
the co-operative movement.” 

Thanks for the correction, which may save me from 
offending my American patients; I have a large pro- 
portion of them — amusing people who, I hear, rejoice 
at any among them making money — whether of the 
manner born or not — none of them more sincerely re- 
joiced at your success than your old teacher. You 
return with a round sum?” 

“And increasing — I have not sold out, but my con- 
duit pipe in a Pactolus which may enrich my chil- 
dren’s children, if the science of mineralogy is not a 
vain thing like — like most of sublunary things.” 

The young man looked gloomy; the joy occasioned 
by the meeting with the friend of his youth was 
fleeting. The latter saw clearly that he had questions 
to put which he dreaded to be met with unpleasant 
answers, and he hesitated a little. 

“Of course, you have been out to Montmorency, and 
seen your mother in her little cottage — ” 

“Well, no, old friend; for the reason that I have 
mislaid the address, and that I hoped that you would 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


17 


not only provide it, but would accompany me to her 
abode. At least, she is well?” 

“She was in the best health only ten days ago, when 
a call took me to her place, and where I was able to 
assure her that your remittance to your banker’s dem- 
onstrated that neither of you would suffer in the future 
a pang like the overplus you had to endure in your 
young years, my dear Lucien. Ah, I grant that the 
water in the gutter of the Rue St. Denis does not 
roll golden sands, but it carries more than one poor 
devil who bathed in it to a snug final resting-place on 
its bank.” 

“You allude to M. Mauriceau?” said Gerard, with a 
tremor. 

“That is one of them. You certainly had the news of 
his wife’s decease? She might have been pulled 
through if she had yielded to my advice and gone to a 
quiet hamlet of the Vosges, but it was the fashion, that 
year, to pass away at Schwarzesterden Bad, and the 
poor lady went^to her account, in a coating of the 
infernal black ' mud in which Professor — somebody 
with an unutterable name — assured the rich and the 
rare that health and longevity might be found.” 

“Smothered,” exclaimed the other, not familiar 
with the eccentricities of therapeutic a la mode, 

“Bless my soul, no. Those Germans said it was 
liver complaint, but it was nostalgia. If Mauriceau 
had only let her go behind the counter for a day, a 
week in the gigantic stores which he had not yet sold 
for ten millions of money — though I believe he is still 
a sleeping partner — take my word for it that she 


l8 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

would have recovered health in measuring tape and 
cutting off dress-lengths. Look at me: two years ago, 
I determined on retiring, and resting on my laurels 
as professor at the College of France, and the mere 
idea of it gave me the first illness I had ever known. 
Pooh, pooh, don’t suggest to me, laying down the 
burden to which I am accustomed. The old ass, like 
your warriors, is content to die with harness on his 
back!” 

And the good doctor looked round the walls where 
some of the artistic chef-d’ oeuvres w^ere the testimo- 
nials of artists who had paid in kind, and smiled with 
resolution. 

“And Mile. Mauriceau,” continued Gerard, who 
had time 'to steady his voice. 

“Well, her mother’s death threw her into a decline: 
she thought the world very hollow for a while; it 
was just at that period when you were wrecked in 
the Polynesian Archipelago and we had no news of 
you, good or bad; and to tell the truth, the dela)^ was 
so long that ‘I exhausted my stock of fiction,” re- 
marked the doctor, pursing up his red, full lips drolly. 
“She languished like her mother, who was not strong; 
the atmosphere is unfit to breathe in the stores, 
such as Mauriceau and his wife and their foregoers 
spun their cloth of gold in. This time, Mauriceau 
did not have recourse to fashionable M. D.’s, but let 
me and a brother physician attend to the case at 
home.” 

“A consultation?” muttered the young man gravely. 
“Was it so serious as that?” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


19 


“Nothing is serious to the young,” answered Ramo- 
nin. “But let us not read any more pages of my day- 
book. You are sure to see soon with your own eyes that' 
the young lady has a long and non-suffering life before 
her, for, with the pedestal of gold which you can ap- 
pear upon and be rolled into diXiy salon, you may count 
on meeting her.” 

“Scarcely at her father’s,” said Gerard, biting his 
mustache, “for we did not exchange one of those 
farewells which were like a prima donna’s, merely the 
forerunner to man}^ pleasant reunions.” 

“You have money, my boy; and Mauriceau will be 
glad enough to greet you — in his drawing-room — as 
elsewhere. ” 

“But his daughter?” 

This time, the genial doctor ceased to smile. 

“To make a clean breast of it, Lucien, I have not 
been their way for some weeks — nay, months. How can 
I help it? Paris society is one of those revolving swings 
where your friend is carried up out of reach by the 
continual movement and sometimes the interval is 
long before you meet again. Then, no one has en- 
snared you in the great Republic, which we judge 
from the plentiful samples supplied us in person, to 
abound with consummate flirts?” 

“No one,” replied Gerard, moodily, not knowing any 
too clearly what question was asked. 

“Well, so much the better,” returned the celibate 
doctor. “Married life has its good side, but there is a 
good deal to be said on the silver lining of a single 
life at Paris, at all events. But in one of your let- 


20 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


ters, the first you wrote after that second alarming long 
silence of yours— when you were in the private hos- 
pital at — at — ” 

“Westeria City. You need not consult the map. It 
was a town of eight thousand population when I met 
with an almost fatal attack there, but to-day what the 
Americans call the boom has past — a puff of wind 
that inflated a bubble, and the coyote steals up the 
Broadway and disputes for a dead horse’s bones on 
the jasper steps of the First National Bank of WeS' 
tcria City.” 

“But the beautiful girl wl om you styled your saver 
— though, between ourselves, I believe the surgeon had 
the lion’s share in your recovery, for the Americans 
are commendable leaders in surgery, let me tell you — 
what became of her; did she ride away on the boom? 
ha, ha, ha! ” 

“It’s not so short a story,” said Gerard, agitated. 

“I see that you are impatient for later and more 
precise news than I have of your dear ones. Pardon 
me, my dear boy: if you are agreeable, v/e will have 
lunch here — I can answer for my cook, who is the niece 
of La Conchon, whom you may vaguely remember. 
You can repeat the story of your adventure and the 
angel of the League of Lady Nurses, and then I will 
see you to the Circular Railway station for your run 
out to Montmorency.” 

‘'But your time, doctor — your patients?” 

“Do not fret. As you see me, returned from my 
constitutional’ ride, I have already been to the hos- 
pital and attended to my poor patients here. ... As 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


21 


for the others who may call, I have an assistant to lis- 
ten to their imaginary woes, and — in short I will be 
none the worse for the jaunt in your company after 
the repast.” 

It was clear that the doctor was going to make a 
holiday of this red-letter event; at the table he 
brimmed with joy, and one who saw him helping the 
patd and the caviared toast and the wine from a little 
vinej^ard on his own property in the Champagne 
country, while chuckling, would have believed that it 
was his own son welcomed home by a prodigal 
father. 

“It was while I was in the flush of delight at hav- 
ing at last grasped a share in one of those incredible 
sources of the world’s gold supply,” commenced the 
young man, "that I stopped at Westeria City to have 
samples of ore verified and a chat with a geologist from 
the Germany which you do not love, I see, and I met 
one of those misadventures which seem so ridiculous 
to you gentlemen who dwell environed with the guards 
of civilized capitals. In plain words, while impru- 
dently promenading the plank streets in the darkness, 
and dreaming of what my fortune might now easily 
accomplish, I was suddenly surrounded by half a dozen 
ruffians, who held me up to begin with, as their 
phraseology terms it, and proceeded to hang me up 
to one of those guards which prevent the stray goats 
and the town hog barking the young trees; I expect 
you will never experience the sensation of being the 
target for the revolvers of several intoxicated, half- 
savage, coarse fellows who have no idea of amusement 


22 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


without brutal infliction of pain. They had taken me 
unawares, and 1 had not been given a chance to draw 
and defend myself — but when two of them closed in 
to deprive me of my weapons and rob me, I took ad- 
vantage of the others lowering their pistols to cut at 
the pair with a knife which I carried in a sheath for 
such emergencies. Remember, I was fresh from the 
wild Indian country and, besides, when a man has a 
share of a gold mine, he is not to have his hold on life 
torn off with impunity. The sweep of my steel cleared 
the circle a little, and I was able to get my revolver 
out, but the combat was too unequal and again I was 
at their mercy, and worse off than before, as 1 was 
wounded in two places, the blood flowing generously, 
though I had a frame spare from my recent fatigues 
in mountain climbing. 

“Without any pity, they continued their usual sport 
— like the red Indians, they shot at me with heed not 
to strike a vital spot, so as to prolong my agony.” 

“Oh, that I had the dissection of them:” exclaimed 
the good doctor, jabbing his fruit-knife energetically 
into a compote of greengages. 

“It will occur to you that firearms, even in the most 
cool and experienced hands, would not be a jot too 
well placed. In those of my tipsy experimentalists, 
perhaps not first-class marksmen to put it mildly, this 
was a pastime to be smartly repressed. 

“It was right here, as the American expression goes, 
that the intervention of the goddess out of the ma- 
chine was opportune, and my good star led her here. 
In a word a young woman, clad in a kind of semi- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


23 


masculine coat and unmentionables tucked into the 
full tops of natty and delicate Polish boots — for the 
American women have feet to which the Parisians 
alone may come into competition with any hope of 
reaching the second place— this young woman, I re- 
peat, abruptly darted into the thick of the cowardly 
group. 

“It seemed to me, as my glance revived out of a fit 
of despair, that she showed contempt for me during 
my martyrdom with too much calmness; but seeing 
the third of my antagonists disabled, and partially 
sobered, she reconsidered her bad opinion of me, and 
flashed out a pistol. 

“'Here, you low down rough-scuffs,^ she remarked, 
suiting her language to the audience, and plunging 
into the ring with that fearlessness of the American 
woman which I had never entertained so high an 
opinion of to that moment, ‘hold on with your black- 
guard conduct, which is a disgrace to this rapidly-de- 
veloping Queen City of the Continent. Put that 
man down straight off, especially seeing that he is a 
foreigner. Do you want to scare away French and 
English Syndicates?’ she added with fine irony lost 
on the stupor-stricken gang. ‘You will be behaving 
more like sensible folks if you let me have a look at 
him as well as at these noisy -brother-toughs of 
yours, who seem to have broken their teeth in biting 
off a harder morsel than they could chew.’ 

“While the men sullenly obeyed and released me, 
for an American woman is obeyed where a czar would 
perhaps be jeered at, she stepped up to the worst 


24 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


wounded of the men whom my knife had slashed and 
gave him an intelligent look. A gleam from a distant 
electric light, for this backwoods town had some of 
the luxuries of the Place de L’Op6ra, illuminated the 
face, and she went on to say calmly, belong to the 
hospital here. 1 am one of the Florence Nightingale 
Sisterhood,’ and she showed a badge fluttering on 
her frock-coat, ^You need only carry this one and his 
pard. T’other will have gone up the flume before the 
ambulance calls.’ 

“The crowd only scowled on hearing this verdict 
that my bowie had executed the ruffian’s death-sen- 
tence upon their leader. One of them, judging from 
my browned complexion and my black hair that I 
was of Southern origin, muttered that they were de- 
termined not to allow Spaniards to set the fashion in 
style in their city. 

“'For shame!’ she said, with flashing eyes, 'it is 
the man that we want out here, and it strikes me, (I 
am repeating the lady’s speech, doctor), that he has 
struck you as became a man.’ 

“This was very flattering, but any glow of satisfac- 
tion which I might feel was damped by seeing that 
my champion only exasperated my tormentors into re- 
newing the attack, and including her as an additional 
but — 

'Oh, you side with him, do you?’ growled the man 
who became the new captain. 'Then you ain’t a true 
daughter of your country. Who turned him loose any- 
how? and ain’t one of you got another lariat to tie her 
up along side of him? we will take a shot at him and 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


25 


at her alternate — at him with the revolver and her 
with the “kisser.” I have never seen a prettier gal, nor 
one so queerly dressed, but woman is woman, what- 
ever the sauce with which she comes to table.’ 

“This inaugural address of the new commander met 
with the approval always awaiting, novelty in this 
world eager for a change, for roaring with laughter, 
unmindful of their wounded comrades, they were go- 
ing to make a rush which I no longer had the strength 
to baffle. 

“But my protectress, not content with her pistol, 
which might indeed seem contemptible to these fel- 
Lows, armed with army-size shooters, pulled out of a 
shagreen case a long, bright blade of steel, horrible by 
its unusual shape and suggestion of sharpness uncom- 
mon; you in particular know, doctor, with what 
ghastliness the vulgar understanding invests the sight 
of a surgical instrument. 

“‘This is a proof that I do belong to the hospital,’ 
she said not a bit daunted: ‘it is the instrument with 
which an operation has been performed for a virulent 
disease; I was taking it home to burn the virus out of 
it. You had better be careful, for a scratch of this 
is a death to which the tarantula’s or the mountain 
centipede’s nip is a feeble sting.’ 

“They all cowered, and another man pushed the lead- 
er aside as he confronted us and said, with a kind of 
effort at a proper feeling that did him credit: ‘I ask 
your pardon, madam; for we are in the wrong in this 
brush. And we back out according. As for your 
poison, we are total abstainers from that kind. Come 


26 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


on, boys, we will carry our dead to our own burying- 
ground and give the Spaniard a lift to your Hospital. 
All facts sifted out, he fit fare and square, and I am 
sorry for one that I split his coat. The dust has run 
low wdth me, but I am prepared to contribute my 
quota toward his new outfit, and no man can say 
fitter than that.’ 

“It is not necessary to say that I excused the turbu- 
lent gentry from making the damages good. I accept- 
ed with some repugnance the transportation, but I was 
too weak to care keenly what hands supported me in 
my painful walk to the refuge. I was more seriously 
mauled than had been thought; when men whose mus- 
cles have been toughened by wielding the miner’s 
sledge and pick strike in earnest, the bones are lame 
for long after. T had a bad attack of fever; and under 
heaven, I am compelled to believe that it is to the in- 
tervention of Miss Reina Vanness and to her unremit- 
tent attentions as my nurse that I owe the pleasure of 
being your vis a vis at the table again." 

“Capital! “ exclaimed the doctor. “We have our 
street vermin, but such an adventure could not be 
matched in our byways. The electric light, the latest 
scalpel, the lady in an a7nazone, and the offer to buy 
you a new coat — the story is delightfully original. 
Really, I must go over to America, and see the hos- 
pitals where the nurses are as able to cope with bul- 
lies on the pave as with the hydra of malady in the 
sick ward.” 

“And the sequel?” inquired M. Ramonin, as he un- 
tied the napkin in which he had swathed his rosy chin. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


27 


"Like ail true romances, there is none. I dare say 
the lady has married, and been divorced, in the style 
of her country, two or three times while I have been 
concluding my roamings," said Gerard, without much 
interest in his heroine, who had charmed the doctor, 
perhaps because of the professional connection with 
him. 

The old gentleman left the room, with a red spot on 
.his cheeks and his eyes blazing like carbuncles. He 
was proud to have beside him, on their walk down the 
gentle slope, so handsome a cavalier, for whether the 
drain of the best men in the wars of the great Empire 
or Capuan enjoyments of the Second Empire have de- 
teriorated the manhood, Gerard seemed a colossus 
among the exquisites, whose idea of dissipation was a 
lemon smashed in seltzer water, and of gymnastics 
a bout with a fencing-master too well paid to risk 
offense by buttoning a pupil. 

At nearly every step, Gerard had an opportunity of 
verifying the extent of the fashionable doctor’s circle: 
republican France though it was, he heard dukes and 
marquises as often announced as colonels and judges 
in the other Republic from which he arrived. 

"You see," said the cicerone, delighted, "we could 
get you up a company to operate your gold field, with 
a list of aristocratic and plutocratic subscribers that 
would vie with that for the Panama Canal. You have 
fortune’s wheel at your foot, to kick it into any 
direction you will." 

"If not too late!" sighed Gerard. 

"I tell you that M. Mauriceau, man of millions 


28 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


though he be, cannot turn the cold shoulder on one who 
could match diamonds with him for the adornment of 
his daugliter and the suitor^ s beloved. May the hope 
that has sustained you and saved you from that Ameri- 
can siren be soon realized! and I am confident that it 
will. My day is broken up. I cannot attend to my 
affairs now. While you go to pay the filial visit to your 
mother, to whom I beg to be remembered, I will go 
to Mauriceau’s and glean full particulars of his daugh- 
ter as a regale to the breakfast I want you to share 
with me at Bignon’s to-morrow.” 

“As you please, the last friend of my father’s, and 
my first.” 


CHAPTER II 


BY ABSENCE ONE ALWAYS LOSES 

A large gathering of idlers blocked the way at the 
foot of the declivity, half-way to the boulevards, on 
the kind of esplanade in front of Saint Augustine’s 
Church. They were staring at the files of elegant 
equipages, the panels of the carriages glittering with 
heraldic blazonry, the horses decorated with rosettes 
and streamers and the coachmen and footmen wearing 
bouquets nearly as large as their powdered heads. 
This congregation made passage difficult, although 
the pavement is broad. The ample portals of the holy 
edifice, where it was “good form” under the Empire 
to celebrate the alliances of the money-spinners’ 
daughters and the mushroom aristocrac}^ under the 
Empire, were thronged with more select gazers in 
their best clothes. 

“A good omen,” said the doctor. “Look at that — our 
steps are interrupted by a wedding. And a stylish one 
too. Tut, tut, what has come to my head that I do not 
know an event of this importance? Look, Lucien, the 
carriages are still coming from all directions. It re- 
minds me of the fine days under the Exile of ChiseL 
hurst — when the lounger at least had his fill of show, 
if bread was sometimes scarce.” 

29 


30 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


dragging his friend into the chattering mass, with 
chat ever-new, childish curiosity of the confirmed Pa- 
risian sight-seeker, the doctor ferreted among the car- 
riages, reading off the family name and reciting little 
piquant anecdotes which the emblems recalled, as 
well ancient as modern. 

“It is a very, ver}^ grand affair,” he said while the 
young man remained indifferent, though a little net- 
tled at the elegant cut and material of the wedding- 
guests’ garments of his age, who clustered to receive 
their friend, the bridegroom, and the lady of his 
choice. Though Gerard did not frequent the best 
society, he was sure that he had brilliant speci- 
mens of it under his eyes. Their conversation, of 
which snatches came to him through the careless- 
ness of the speakers, who did not regard the hearers 
not of their set as existent, their allusions to occur- 
rences which one arrived from the Far West could not 
possibly divine, and the glib way in which the loftiest 
names were handled, all perplexed and stupefied him. 
They bantered the ladies who were seen passing in 
their carriages to go to shop on the grand boulevards, 
or to pay visits on the other side of the river. To them 
one was “the lady-love of the Grand Frenchman; 
another, the richest of the rich. Baroness Kirsch- 
wasser; another, the ever-young Countess Mortalez: 
tliis, the latest Italian beauty, that, the oldest Parisian 
one;” and still the gallery of notorieties streamed by, 
at each of whom the cynical throng had a bitter word 
to fling. 

“Wait a minute,” said the doctor, exchanging nods 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS $1 

and wags of the crooked forefinger in mimicry of the 
English hand-shakes; “at last I see the very man I 
want. It is M. Guy Deshaltes, the best informed man 
in all Paris. Eh, my friend; Guy, my dear Guy: “ he 
repeated until a tall, slender gentleman approached in 
faultless attire, immaculate shirt and collar and cuffs 
rigid^as steel, and with a smile submitted to presen- 
tation to the mining engineer. 

“Whose is the wedding?” he repeated in a tone of 
as strong surprise as was proper to exhibit even to so 
startling an admission of incredible ignorance. “Faith, 
my dear fellow, it is you who must have come from 
the hyperboreal region. It is Septmonts who is the 
lucky dog; he catches the sop of millions, my dear 
old friend.” 

“Septmonts? the Duke des Septmonts,” echoed the 
doctor. “There, I believe I did hear something on 
that head, but I never dreamt that he would marry 
and settle down.” 

“He would not, of his own accord, but the lady’s 
settlements have dished his scruples. Besides, the 
pill is not only gilded thickly, but it is shapely be- 
yond compare and flavored exquisitely. I repeat that 
this is not an execution of a good fellow over whom 
we shall mourn, but a gathering of the clans to con- 
gratulate their chief on a stroke of fortune in his favor. ” 

“But who is the bride?” inquired Dr. Ramonin, 
testily, for the hubbub and the jostling of the genteel 
mob into which he had unwisely ventured, conduced to 
mar the good effects of the joyous meeting and break- 
fast with his protege. 


)2 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

“The daughter of the ‘Three Sultanas/” rejoined 
Guy Deshaltes merrily. 

“A Turk?” began the doctor when given a clue by 
the mockiiig accent or tne speaker, he remembered and 
was about to speak when he felt Lucien start vio- 
lently at hk side. 

The second of Ckirlcigeb nad come, and there 

was a crush to get a peep at the young lady in white 
and orange nowers, whose odor ran on before to an- 
nounce her as an elderly gentleman stepped out of an 
irreproachable carriage, drawn by English high-step- 
ping and cruelly bitted horses, and turned round to 
help out the expected center of the ceremony. 

“It is Catherine,” muttered Gerard, losing color 
and quivering as if a terrible blow had fallen on his 
head. 

“Then, it is Mauriceau’s daughter, ” said the doctor, 
almost as much saddened and astounded. 

“Yes, I thought everybody knew that he retains an 
interest in the Sultanas,” concluded the tall dandy. 

He left the pair in consternation and endeavored 
with unusual animation to pierce the concourse, 
already three deep, around the beaming papa. 

M. Gregoire Mauriceau as of medium height, and 
the high heels of his patent-leather shoes could not 
lend him much elevation. He was inclined to become 
stout, but suddenly as if good living meant to be 
revenged by giving him unwholesome corpulency 
because he had neglected the table in earlier life. 
His face was still moderate in color, allowing for thp 
pardonable flush on such an occasion, and was still 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


33 


suggestiveof shrewdness in the prominent cheek-bones 
though the lower part of the jaws was beginning to 
thicken. This, with the nose being slightly hooked, 
reminded one that the name of Mauriceau, another 
variation of Morris, Meurice, etc., is of Hebraic origin. 
Formerly clean shaven, he had recently cultivated a 
pair of the tufty side-whiskers, introduced into Paris 
by the English comedian, Sothern, in the character 
of a silly British nobleman, and strange to say, 
favored by financial and commercial persons as hav- 
ing a serious, business-like air. It was the aspect of 
one of those born usurers who, after resigning their 
lucrative but scarcely glorious vocation to a trusty 
cashier, join the church and contribute reasonably, 
to those charitable foundations that lavishly adver- 
tise the list of donators. 

But the by-standers for once had not a great atten- 
tion to bestow on the father of the bride, who is but 
the third personage in the tragedy — or farce, as you 
look upon it, of marriage in a fashionable temple. 

The bride had the beauty of three sultanas com- 
pressed in one maiden — there was no denying this. 
Catherine Mauriceau was a trifle pallid with emotion, 
but it was nothing more than that “stage fright,” from 
which the debutante in all the great events of society 
is encouraged not to be exempt since it makes her all 
the more interesting. 

However plebeian her source, it was not apparent. 
One of our old proverbs says that the difference in 
the dairy-maid and the duchess lies in the dress, and 
Catherine proved it. If like her mother, she had 


3 


34 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


served behind the counter, the chance member of good 
society who saw her, in escorting his fiancde hither, 
would have come back at the hour of closing and tried 
to have the pleasure of introducing her at the milli- 
ner’s, jeweler’s and late supper-room keeper’s of the 
side-streets: and even among the indubitable descend- 
ants of the peerage dating from the First Empire, 
Mile. Mauriceau, thanks to native wit and the excel- 
lence of her instructors, had not suffered eclipse. 
She managed her step out of the carriage with infi- 
nite skill, and walked through the double hedge of 
those who envied her promised mate, with just the 
right measure of virginal trepidation and the jaunti- 
ness of the well-bred. Her wedding-dress was the 
supreme effort of the inventor of vogue, a basis of 
white on which floated lace of cream and ecru, while 
the endless garland of the hymeneal orange appeared 
here and there as if strewn at random. 

Sighing for the vision, as so much loveliness flash- 
ing only to disappear forever, left a blistering impres- 
sion on his heart, Lucien turned with frenzy to exam- 
ine the husband to whom the family consigned her. 

The Duke Maximin des Septmonts, to any but this 
judge returned from the wild West where the ideal 
of man is very primitive compared with that of the 
habituds of the cafds and night-houses, might have 
passed as a finished specimen of what his world 
looked for in the representative of a race whose "Seven 
Mounts" were almost as ancient as those of Rome 
herself. He was not yet forty, and all who .had not 
the book of the nobility by heart took him to have 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


35 


scarce stepped across the bar of the third decade. 
No doubt, his valet knew to what was due the clear 
complexion, the tint of color and the brilliancy of the 
bold, big black eyes. 

The leader of society, male or female, does not sit 
at the toilet table without the spirit of science stand- 
ing at his or her elbow. As Maximin had a square 
frame, he seemed to resemble his ancestors of the 
da3^s when they could leap into the saddle though 
sheathed in a hundred weight of brass or steel. After 
the patriotic fashion of trying to appear military, he 
had his black mustache cut in the style of a heavy 
dragoon colonel’s, and his hair cropped short, as if 
accustomed to the helmet, was artistically tossed in 
crisp curls. It was a sham; in the same manner as 
his father had eluded the Prussians during the war 
by residence at the safe distance of his mansion at 
Lancaster-gate, London, so the son, with all his 
demeanor of the chief of a regiment, instead of train- 
ing for the impending conflict, merely pretended to 
ride hard, keep his hand expert with the sword of 
combat — for he was skillful with the fencing-foil and 
the saloon-pistol — and follow the wolf hounds on his 
estate in Brittany. But what was one sham more or 
less when the duke dwelt in an age and among those 
who wore masks, hollow anthropoids. To the pen- 
etrative gaze of Gerard, the clothes of these manikins 
seemed transparent; these limbs that moved so regu- 
larly were but galvanized; the voice that was meas- 
ured and musical though withcut variety, w^ould sud- 
denly die away; and the unnatural, unchanging bloom 


36 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


on the cheek would scale off. The faultless suit would 
become too ample for the shrinking form, a miracle 
of the padder^s art, the flaccid nerves would no longer 
respond to the hypodermic injection, and the last of 
the line that had not acted a noble part for a hundred 
years would be laid forever in the great necropolis of 
baseless admiration. 

At present the noble intended of Mile. Mauriceau 
was a substantial barrier to Gerard’s hopes. 

If only he could rebuke her with a look; remind 
her that he had preserved himself for a happier meet- 
ing than this with the only occupant of his heart? 
But that was vain, for she was too well taught for her 
new position to favor the external spectators with a 
glance. She glanced about her no doubt, but as the 
city lady does— sees all without letting the object 
most scrutinized perceive that he was singled out. 
As for the vulgar herd, among whom Gerard was 
placed, she ignored them as if already a duchess. 
Not even for one group had she a glance; the choice 
of her father’s sales and work-people who, indelicate 
enough to set at nought the secrecy of Mauriceau’ s 
connection with his old enterprise, had brought a 
wreath and were trying to induce the Swiss beadle of 
the church to add it to other offerings. The obdurate 
official sneered at the joy and pride of these folk in 
the sight of “their young lady marrying one of the 
real nobility.” 

Catherine did not see them, or Doctor Ramonin, 
whom she did not know, or Lucien. To meet the for- 
gotten lover thus might have caused the vulgar coT 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


37 


lapse of a death-like swoon, for her corsage was glove- 
fitting, and Mauriceau would have blamed the doctor 
for having planned this evil encounter. 

Nothing happened; too seldom does any block arise 
to such sacrifices on these altars; and the bride and 
her father entered the fane. To the debarred lover 
the portals, where incense floated and around which 
the strains of a wedding-march began to echo, would 
ever be like that gate of the Inferno "which the lost 
souls call Never. ” 

Recovering from his dismay, the doctor dragged the 
stupefied young man by the arm locked in his, across 
the space now clear. Gerard yielded to his pressure 
like an automaton. 

"You must go to your mother’s now," said the old 
man firmly as one speaks to a patient whose mind is 
too full of a fixed idea. "I am not going to leave 
you for an instant, remember." 

Luckily, it is but a step to the St. Lazare Station. 

But many an important event may take place 
between two steps in Paris, and as the doctor was 
congratulating himself on substantial progress without 
his disconsolate charge offering resistance, or even 
showing that he had come to the end of his reflection, 
the two were brought to a stand-still by the darting 
of a carriage-and-pair athwart their path and so close 
to the foot-way that they had to retrace their paces 
not to be cut by the wheel or the brazen hub. 

In such cases, the vulgar victim looks at the coach- 
man to abuse him in the language which men of the 
stable best comprehend, while the better-bred inspect 


38 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


the occupant to make sure if it is the ri*ghtful owner, 
or only the house-maid whom the knight of the whip 
is taking out for an airing in her mistress’s cast-off 
finery and feathers. 

It was a day for our friends to meet surprises, for 
in the lady, enchanting in tissue almost too summery 
for the season, sitting in the correct and insolent atti- 
tude of the carriage-dame, both recognized an ac- 
quaintance. 

“Reina!” exclaimed Gerard, turning white and 
involuntarily throwing up his arms, but no one could 
tell whether to embrace or to repel, while the other, 
taking off his hat as to a sovereign, hailed the daz- 
zling person as 

“Miss Vanness!” 

But, remarking that she had no heed save for the 
young man at his side, and remembering what he had 
just been told of the Western adventure, he said to 
himself with more pain than the sight of Mile. 
Mauriceau going to the altar had caused him: 

“Then this is his American Girl — in Paris! Poor 
boy!” 



It i 


Reina!' exclaimed Gerard, turning white.” — (p. 38.) 






CHAPTER III. 


THE SHELL THROWN INTO THE FORT. 

Among the new and superb palaces which excite 
covetousness in the passser-by, in the Avenue de 
Wagram, stands the monument to the folly of the 
minister of state of a power, since swallowed up by 
the Empire of Germany, for the nine days tenantcy 
of a prima donna whose loss of voice soon compelled 
her ordering her lawyer in dumb show to dispose of 
the white elephant to a fair bidder. But the taste 
inclined towards bijoii residences, where the dainty 
furniture of the Dubarry boudoirs would not dwarf 
the “Petites Crevettes, ” and for years, the magnifi- 
cent structure awaited its queen. 

When M. Mauriceau sold out of the “Three Sul- 
tanas,” his man of affairs counseled him to retain 
secretly a finger in the pie, as he facetiously put it, 
the agent who conducts a negotiation of ten million 
of francs, scrapes off enough of the gflding to be 
allowed a jest. When soon after, he purchased the 
Grand Chancellor’s unlucky fooPs-castle, the same 
prudent adviser suggested that he should not hand it 
over to his daughter and her noble partner, the Duke 
of Septmonts, free and clear; one never knew what 
might happen in this abnormal age; he had known 

39 


40 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


husbands turned out of doors by wives, in whose 
name they had only too tightly locked up their prop- 
erty; daughters and sons had not the virtue strong, 
of being filial; in short, M. Mauriceau’s reputation 
as a sage would not be diminished if he retained for 
his private use a wing of the edifice, which would 
still be sufficient for a duke and his duchess and all 
their multitude of retainers. 

Mauriceau was about to defend his daughter, to 
whom this suspicion of ingratitude was abominable 
to apply; but reflecting that the noble son-in-law was 
not on a par with her in the cardinal virtues, he took 
up residence under the same roof, and determined, 
except to receive his dividend as the sleeping partner, 
that the “Three Sultanas” should know him no more. 

But the acquisition of this palace had made a 
breach in his fortune and he hastened to speculate on 
the Bourse, where he paused, the master of a round 
twenty millions. 

Over a year had passed since the union of Mile. 
Mauriceau and the Duke of Septmonts, of which the 
dry-goods merchant's gains had silvered the peaks. 
The latter told everybody that he was perfectly happy 
and that he found the new society, into which 
his daughter had introduced him by her marriage, 
delightful. It must be admitted that, at the outset, 
several haughty dowagers, lifted upon their ancestral 
trees as upon stilts, indulged in jokes about his hav- 
ing forgotten to bring his sign of the “Three Sultanas” 
from the boulevard to his wing of the SeptmonBs 
mansion. But Mauriceau’s son-in law had supplied 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


41 


him with a stock of old scandals in which these cav- 
illers had figured to disadvantage, and he had re- 
torted on them in a vein not very polished but, per- 
haps, for that reason, more effectual in silencing their 
fire than those torpedoes in use in our times, so 
wrapped up that the explosion is innocuous because 
of the thickness of the envelope. 

The cavillers did not play any jokes. In the first 
place, the new recruit was willing to be a bo?i vivant 
and let his boon companions select for him . at 
sales of cellars of wines; he made up card parties, 
even when the stakes ran high; he went to the races 
and betted, though as yet, his knowledge of the turf 
was at that degree, when he did not know a horse 
from a cow. Such an accommodating man raised no 
enmity. If some loose-tongued, flippant, gilded 
youths thought — which was not likely — of a good 
quip, they left it solitary in what they called a brain, 
unuttered, for the duke was reputed to be a swords- 
man from what his fencing master said, and two or 
three encounters when he was younger. 

But after all, the majority of men are always on 
the side of a pretty woman, and there could be no 
doubt that Catherine des Septmonts was one of the 
fairest and most stylish of a circle, where no one 
soared above her on wings more purely golden. 

But was the young duchess happy, the doctor had 
inquired of Guy Deshaltes; but the gentleman had 
hesitated. 

“I dessay, she is. You know we love in our own 
peculiar mode in our sphere. We have our habits, 


42 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


which we rarely alter, and almost never break away 
from, even for a woman’s sake. But, see here, old 
friend — since this young duchess interests you so 
much, as one whom you brought into this world of 
duns and protested notes, some twenty odd years ago 
— why, here are a couple of tickets for the Charity 
caper, she and her set are going to cut next Wednes- 
day — a ‘fete de bienfaisance’ for the benefit of the 
coal miners down on her husband’s estate. Go and 
have a peep. at her, and see that she is the most envi- 
able of women.” 

Dr. Ramonin knew where to find Gerard. Morose, 
since the shattering of his illusions of woman’s fidel- 
ity to her first love, the young engineer has striven 
to wear oS his misanthropy, which became apathy as 
the only improvement; by the sparkling of his eye, 
the doctor saw that he had forgotten nothing; but 
fifteen or eighteen months’ study of his protege had 
shown him that he had a rare self-command, and he 
had no misgivings in accompanying him to the festi-. 
val at the duke’s. 

Indeed, it was not in this grand and stately house 
—not in these primly laid out gardens that a pas- 
sionate outburst of a discarded swain was to be ex- 
pected; here had roamed courtiers who had thrown 
their nieces or nearer ones in the path of the Grand 
Monarque, and the classical statues amid the shrub- 
bery, hacked and hewn into unnatural shapes, con- 
stantly reminded one of self-control; the like lesson 
was impressed by the imposing entrance in red Sienna 
marble, with inlay moldings of old gold, and the 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


43 


scenic coat of the Seven Mounts over the doorway: 
the peaks, gold on the azure field. 

Usually, when a mansion is turned into a concert- 
hall or a bazaar, for any of the public who can obtain 
a ticket and suitable apparel, the sense of having 
paid your way in, gives the previously venerated pile 
a sordid air. Not so the Septmont’s mansion; when 
the visitors handed over the handsomely printed paste- 
board to the steward and his assistants, in a roomy 
vestibule, walled with variegated marbles and stat- 
ues by sculptors of fame, they were intimidated, 
while no little set-up by the honor. 

The celebrated staircase, from the Exposition, 
which Mauriceau had bought for nearly a quarter of a 
million francs, half-covered with a carpet too luxuri- 
ous for the foot of any but a princess, was well 
placed to abash the frivolous; the servants in blue 
and yellow, with heavy gold chains, the silence all 
over the rambling house, where still one divined, a 
numerous establishment was on guard; the glimpses 
through half-parted doors of treasures of comfort, art, 
and elegance — all had that gloss of the higher and 
reserved circle in which the unhabituated walk with 
respect, mistrust, repression and overdone courtesy 
to those whom they meet. It was not so much a palace 
as a temple of Aristocracy. The priests were also 
the saints to be adored — and Gerard was soon in the 
mood to adore alone, having laid aside revenge as a 
mean thing, at those massive gates. The doctor 
strolled with him in the grounds, where the stalls 
were set out and presided over by the ladies of 


44 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


name and fame whom it was a glory in itself to have 
as allies to the duchess, who had become patrician 
solely by the march up and down the aisle of St. 
Augustine’s. 

It was here that the host met the doctor; he recog- 
nized the younger man, too, but he had already ac- 
quired good command and did not betray any repug- 
nance. To both he extended the special invitation 
to carry their explorations into the portion of the 
house reserved for the duchess and her intimate 
friends. Among these he was compelled to include 
the family doctor, and M. Gerard had a claim that 
way, remembering how oLten he had eaten with her 
the Mauriceau bread and salt. He emphasized this 
loyalty, since he dared to revive old mem.ories by 
presenting himself, but a glance at the face, as well 
schooled by the year’s anguish as a Sioux warrior’s, 
gave him confidence. 

“Pray, go in and see my daughter. She will be 
delighted to see you. Only you must not expect too 
long a conversation, when she is literaljy besieged 
with friends. If we had fixed the tickets at twenty 
louis instead of twenty francs, we should have had 
the place crowded. It recalls to me the rush at the 
opening of a sacrifice sale — ahem!” but the other 
gentlemen had kindly looked off in another direction 
to relieve him of embarrassment at this slip of the 
tongue. It was no consolation that, better than any 
of the bystanders, these two were familiar with the 
incidents of his early life. 

‘^Sacrifice sale? something recalls to you?” inter- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


45 


rupted a brisk young man who whipped out a note- 
book and a stylographic pen with the celerity of a 
piece of fine mechanism. “I could not have lit in 
this earthly paradise more happily. Dear M. 
Mauriceau, I have not only the honor to request of 
you details on this most recherche fete of the season, 
with list of names of the bevy of beauties tending to 
the sales, but upon the historic race of the Sept- 
monts, a very old family. A few dates, as I can fill 
up the gaps out of the Armorial of France at the 
National Library. But what I seek are some personal 
notes. The title of our journal authorizes me — em- 
powers me. It is — ” and he dexterously distributed a 
number of copies of a journal among the crowd 
which his address had collected, "it is ‘La Personality 
Parisienne.’" 

The unhappy host gave a despairing look toward 
Dr. Ramonin and Gerard, who smilingly withdrew, 
leaving him in the clutches of the reporter, who 
talked of drawing a parallel between the trade of his 
day and that of the present time. 

"Only think that that man was not sorry when I 
had the six francs to pay for the dinners we stood in 
need of at Mother Salignon’s in the Rue St. Denis," 
said the doctor in the dull ear of his young friend. 

All that Gerard was thinking of was that in a few 
instants he would be in the same room as the girl who 
had thrown away the priceless jewel of love for a 
coronet. 

"These money-makers never do anything else when 
they have a good-looking daughter. Their sole idea is 


46 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


to marry her to somebody who is not nobod^^, and cap 
introduce them into society where the gold key failed 
to open the door. He has been marvelously helped 
for our poor Catherine has a beauty and a grace, and 
a brightness of mind which would adorn any scene. 
But to whom am I recounting the eulogies of the — ” 

“The most mercenary of her sex,” said Lucien 
bitterly. “I ask but to see her before — if I find her, 
as I suspect, calm, proud of her gain from trampling 
all that the right-minded worship as holy, under her 
feet — I shall return to the mountains where — unlike 
the golden hills of the family into which she has 
entered — the air is pure, and makes one braver and 
more lofty-minded. I cast aside the thought of 
searching with a bullet the black windings of his 
corrupt and shriveled heart. I can face him now 
and regard him from the height of my contempt. It 
is not such dogs that one arms himself to meet — the 
boot suffices.” 

“Lucien! ” 

“Lead on. Let me have this test-look at her. If 
she outfaces me, she was a woman not worth occu- 
pying my heart, and I shall make my new home in 
America without one longing left behind.” 

“In one respect, I may say the. plotting papa has 
been foiled,” observed the doctor, as they neared the 
house; “eighteen months almost wedded, and no little 
duke to rejoice the fellow. It has upset him, I can 
assure you, and he has flung himself into a sea of dis- 
sipation in which I hardly recognized my old Mauri- 
ceau of sterling conduct during thirty years of trade 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


47 


and business. He was a model husband, too, but 
since his daughter has been married, he undertakes 
to live the life of a gay old bachelor. You doubt, 
but Guy Leshaltes and the merry crew know what he 
does, and they are amused over it. He brags that his 
sixty yetirs are not felt by him, and he thinks his 
anchorite’s course deserves some reward on this dis- 
tracted globe — or globe of distractions, as the poet 
would say now. Mauriceau calls this unseemly behav- 
ior! smashing his pocket savings-bank: not a bad jest, 
but he is traveling on the road to the hospital for 
incurable sufferers with softening of the brain, mark 
my words.” 

But his hearer had not caught half his words. 
They were within the house and approaching the 
privileged rooms. Under a series of family portraits, 
brought from Septmonts’ country-seat, for he had dis- 
posed of the town-house site long before Mauriceau 
came to his aid, Gerard abruptly paused. 

“Doctor, did this know-all of a Guy also inform you 
how and where the lord here came into contact with 
M. Mauriceau? They are not of the same age or the 
same society. Was it simply that he lent the impov- 
erished nobleman some money, and thus was led on to 
negotiations culminating in the sale of his daughter?” 

“I have not the least doubt that whenever Mauri- 
ceau fell in with the duke, the latter lay under a 
cloud, but the son of a noble line, like these memo- 
rials display his to be, required more than merely the 
regilding of his coronet, as the sa3dng goes. He 
sought a lady worthy by appearance, ability, accom- 


48 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


plishments and character to wear the bauble in ques 
tion. So, as a matter of course, he turned to the 
aviary of goldfinches, our American Colony. 

“Well reasoned! The New World fs, indeed, rep- 
resented in many a family founded before the Discov- 
erer of America was born.” 

“My sharp-sighted Guy tells me that the duke 
found what he was looking for, and our friend Mauri- 
ceau found him, that he was looking for, in the draw- 
ing-room of one of these foreigners, young, pretty, 
very odd and eccentric, in whom you will be inter- 
ested when I add that it is Miss Vanness.” 

“Reina, again! Reina had a hand in this shameful 
white-slave traffic!” exclaimed the young man. 

“Hush! not so loud at the antechamber of the 
lady’s apartments. Miss Vanness had hardly more 
than arrived in Paris before her receptions were fa- 
mous among the men about town, the highest bred, 
the most before the public, the most distinguished. 
T do not know what she said to the duke, who passed 
for being a most assiduous waiter on his turn to 
seize her hand as mistress of a great gold mine in 
the States, but when my old Mauriceau let her ^guess’ 
wdiat he was seeking, she brought him into the pres- 
ence of the duke, and said: ‘Here is the man you are 
looking for!’” 

“She arranged this alliance, eh?” said Gerard, more 
and more perplexed and embittered. “Do such evils 
come about by sheer accident? Then, when she crossed 
my path, she was hastening to the wedding — she was 
not too late to have her share in the benediction!” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


49 


“I do not think so,” returned the doctor. “She 
would not go among the ladies ; they say no women 
are ever among her guests, and that she goes no- 
where to meet her own sex. But you ought to know 
her habits; when she wore the masculine coat, had 
she then become mannish to the degree of forswear- 
ing the society of the gentler portion of mankind?” 

“I do not know. Nobody understands that Sphinx. 
To study her enigmas is to court madness — to solve 
them is death.” 

“Everybody was amazed that the duke should not 
only have accepted his dismissal but have accepted a 
wife from her hand. He showed his gratitude by add- 
ing some precious stones to the hoard which makes her 
on her gala days resemble a jeweler’s show-case in the 
Rue de la Paix. Not to be outdone, Mauriceau pre- 
sented this amateur marriage-broker with a necklace 
of six rows of pearls which Guy avers had the stamp 
of the London court-jeweler’s Store and Mortimer upon 
it. As the clasps were set with diamonds, it is reck- 
oned to have cost ten thousand guineas, my dear! 
All things taken in account, our ex-dry-goods mer- 
chant acted as handsomely as my lord, since in point 
of fact he had really to pay the bill for both supple- 
ments to Miss Vanness’ jewels.” 

“Did she accept her wages?” said Gerard. 

“Your American girl is a practical woman in Paris, 
where sentiments have a market price, or how would 
we be able to value them? Guy said, she said dt was 
a fair deal!’ as if it were only the commencement of 
a game.” 

4 


50 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“Perhaps,” thought Lucien, not trusting himself to 
speak. “It seems to me that she owes me a revenge.” 

“That is how Mauriceau’s daughter was disposed 
of,” concluded the doctor. “It must be confessed that 
when he started he made up for lost time; he bought 
seven hundred years of nobility in five minutes.” 

“And remorse for eternity,” observed his hearer 
with solemnity.’ 

“If he be the kind of man I took him for. But if he 
is one of the vain and foolish, he will believe he 
made a good bargain.” 

“He used to say that if he had a son- — ” 

“Ay, but that is altogether different. If he had a 
son, he would have invoked the Equality of Man and 
the Immortal Principles of 1790, and refused his 
hand to any titled beauty unless there were love 
between them. For his son, a Mauriceau, must have 
died a Mauriceau, unless he had won some new handle 
as a man of genius; luckily genius is not an attribute 
of these favorites of lucre. It is the appanage of 
poor scions of misery and the Pariahs. But remove 
from your face the least traces of emotion, for here we 
plunge into a sea where the swimmers must wear an 
unaffected mien though they drown.” 

In the reception-room, where the duchess was hold- 
ing a council of her bosom friends, the two gentlemen 
entered without receiving more than a flitting glance 
from those who were on the edges of the gathering 
and who repeated the glance at a greater length not 
because they remembered the doctor but because his 
companion had a striking bearing. The doctor hap* 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


51 


pened to catch the eye of Guy Deshaltes, and as soon 
as he had nonchalantly finished a cup of tea in egg- 
shell porcelain, the exquisite drew near the new- 
comers. The duchess’ court was composed of two or 
three married couples with titles as ancient as her 
own, a Marchioness de Rumieres, a lively and talka- 
tive dark woman as lissome and tremulous as a creole, 
the Baroness of Hermelines and her husband, as they 
were usually spoken of, .and several dressmakers’ mod- 
els headed with barbers’ blocks, who looked almost 
human. 

"Ah, doctor," said the marchioness, "what have you 
done with our host? I do so want to compliment him 
on the daintiness of this fete." 

"Say them to the duchess," replied Ramonin tartly, 
"I wager she had the greater share in projecting it if 
not in conducting it so successfully." 

"Not so bad as that, dear doctor," said the lady^ 
"I can answer for it that he had some taste. He was 
the first silk-mercer who had the idea to give his cus- 
tomers comfortable seats and set aside a room where 
one could have a biscuit and a glass of Malaga. It was 
a new idea, and with a new idea fortunes have been 
made in Paris." 

"Sometimes with an old one, madame, " interposed 
Gerard with a bow. The doctor hastened to present 
the speaker, on whose account she had added herself 
to the group. 

Gerard submitted, but he was not partial toward 
these fashionable devotees of the fad or idol of 
the day; he might pardon their ignorance of the 


52 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


outer world, but not their want of desire to learn; 
they were inquisitive enough to be a plague, but their 
curiosity was transient; highly impressionable, but 
absent-minded; sensitive, but derisive of the finer 
emotions being manifested; ready to weep or to laugh 
with equal “gush” and the same insincerity; all the 
traits were visible in Madame de Rumieres. 

“What a mixed pack have come into the gardens, 
she prattled, trying to din Gerard if not enchant him. 

‘Whom do you think we spied from the window? M. 
Mauriceau’s successor at the “Three Sultanas;” he has 
brought his good lady with him, a freak of the Fat 
Womankind from some museum; she is studded with 
diamonds to her very bodice; I have a mind to go 
down and tell him that he will never maintain his es- 
tablishment at the height to which Mauriceau raised 
it. But, doctor, how is it that we never see you now? 
— unless we make a call to confer with you on ail- 
ments.” 

“Then we may never meet, for you are the picture 
of health and vivacity.” 

“Fie! your compliments are no more truthful than 
your articles in the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes;, I un- 
dertook to read them, for we must encourage authors, 
when they are of our sphere; but though interesting, 
I had to renounce continuing, for my journal and my 
spiritual director say you are a shocking materialist — 
a brand for the burning.” 

And she indulged in a playful shudder of horror 
which made Guy and the doctor smile, while she shrank 
away from Ramonin almost into the arms of Gerard. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


53 


“Exaggeration,” replied the professor. “But, what 
ails our dear young hostess? Quite the contrary of 
you, she has no delicious color, and indeed she is pale 
as one who has seen a specter. ” 

“Just so; you are right, doctor,” said the mar- 
chioness, looking toward the duchess, over whom had 
indeed come a sudden change: “pooh, it is the fa- 
tigue; she has been in and out of all the fancy stalls, 
and cheering the backward buyers to besiege the stock 
of rubbishing trifles which are so sillily the custom to 
exhibit. ” 

“Dash it all,” exclaimed Guy; “you would not have 
things of utility sold by your fair hands, would you? 
I should like to see M. de Rumieres or M. d’ Her- 
melines helping their pages or footmen to fill their 
carriages with brooms, soap and hat-brushes.” 

At this moment, the doctor perceived his prot^gd 
making a slight salute by a nod to one at a distance 
whom he guessed to be the hostess, but before he 
could put a question, the young man took the arm of 
Deshaltes and observed: “You are the godson, I be- 
lieve, of the Bishop of Grenoble, v/hom we have on 
the board of the mining corporation to which I am 
consulting engineer? He has written your name in for 
a block of shares, and I make bold to presume that 
you will not be sorry to have the opinion on the in- 
vestment, of one who has surveyed this modern 
Cathay? ” 

The two young gentlemen walking away in company, 
the marchioness had no wish to linger, and the 
doctor left her, to approach the young lady, who re- 


54 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


ceived him cordially on hearing who he was. He fan- 
cied that her surprise was not at all great, and in 
fact it was not long in the course of the dialogue with 
one for whom her mother had cherished deep esteem, 
before she alluded to his companion. 

“You brought into the room somebody whom I know 
and who too scrupulously kept his distance wdiile sa- 
luting rather the mistress of the house than an old 
acquaintance. ” 

“Yes: you may even style him ^friend,’” prompted 
the doctor. 

“Why did he not come up to me?” she was inquiring 
when her interlocutor saw the Duke des Septmonts 
enter the room, and he eluded the direct demand by 
liinting that he would dilate on the agreeable subject 
at the earliest opportunity. “Maximin, ” she continued 
to her husband, “this is Professor Ramonin, whose 
essays in the ‘Revue’ are in everybody’s mouth.” 

The duke smiled as he extended his fine, blanched 
hand. 

“The doctor is no stranger to me, and I trust this 
is only the first of a series of welcorne visits; no one 
can feel more grateful to him than your husband, since 
he introduced you into the world, as I come from 
hearing your respected father say.” 

The duchess had retired, and as the others had 
flocked around the rich Senora de la Marmalada, just 
entered, to admire her sapphires, she went unnoticed 
into one of the window recesses, where she appeared 
to study the scene in the gardens, while partly mask- 
ing her countenance with a marabout fan. When she 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


55 


was out of hearing, the duke went on with a wicked 
smile: “It is not so much by your ^Revue^ that I know 
of you, doctor, as through the trumpeting of a fairer 
personatrix of Fame — the American belle, or as more 
say, the Belle Amdricaine, to whom many of us owe 
social advancement,” 

“Miss Vanness?” said the doctor. 

“None other. She is one of my best friends,” returned 
the nobleman, “and I do not care that I am overheard 
in that boast by our dear Guy Deshaltes. Guy, whom 
of course you already know, for he is the comrade of 
everybody, Guy is a brother collegian of mine. He 
did not drop me when I married, but continues to 
talk love to my wife and morality to me.” 

“Preaching in the desert in both cases,” returned 
Deshaltes, sharply. 

“Quite so,” said the duke. “I am well aware that 
my duchess is a most honorable woman, and that I 
need have no alarm on your score, because of her vir- 
tue. It is as natural for you and the rest of the Light 
Brigade of professional danglers to offer homage to 
the Duchess of Septmonts as for me, as one of the 
Heavy Brigade, to salute the standard-bearer of the 
battalion of Transatlantic beauties who invade our 
salons. Gallantry forms part of the rights, one may 
almost say the duties, of the world to which we be- 
long, and if we dropped it suddenly, society would 
not be worth maintaining. So pa}^ your attentions to 
the duchess, my dear Guy; you may even condole with 
her on being linked with a monster; speak a little 
evil of me, but not too much! I expect the grilling 


56 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


but not the red pepper too thickly. I warn you that 
you will only waste your time and pretty sugary 
speeches, and on the day when some malaper.t says 
aloud the jest which I read in our amiable but cynical 
doctor’s eyes, I will teach him that what he consid- 
ered extraordinary confidence was natural.” 

Laying his hand on the dandy’s shoulder, he 
proceeded in the same vein of sarcasm and dis- 
belief in man or woman of his circle, ‘‘Go to the 
duchess, Guy, while she stands by herself for an 
instant. It is the chance. And come you, doc- 
tor, whom I should not as soon trust with a pretty 
woman, and have a cup of tea. It is a present of 
Prince Gagaroff’s sent by his brother, the prince sus- 
pected of Nihilism: the powers gave him the benefit 
of the doubt and instead of investing him with the 
Order of the Felons’ Ball-and- Chain, of Siberia, they 
made him governor of as heaven-forsaken a spot on 
the Southeastern frontier where he augments his 
revenue by winking at smuggling. The tea, you 
will notice, has all the extra flavor of forbidden 
things. ” 

During this, Deshaltes had gently edged up to the 
distraite lady of the house, isolated as too often that 
personage is when she lends herself to a human senti- 
ment. She started slightly as the duke’s envoy said 
in a low voice: 

‘‘Excuse me, I was sent by the duke.” 

“For what reason.?’” 

“Say, for what nonsense. He does not like you to 
be alone.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


57 


“I was not alone, M. Deshaltes; I was with my 
thoughts. ” 

As she still kept her eyes on the groups in the 
grounds, she started, for she descried Gerard, who 
had fled from her, it was clear, but who had surrendered 
at discretion to his gadflies, for he was the center of 
a cluster of women. It was too far to watch the play 
of their features, and the duchess could not guess 
that these ladies of the “End of our Century” were 
not putting petty questions in a loving vein but such 
as sound the good faith of the mining speculation of 
which he was a strong supporter. 

“You tremble,” said Guy with some sympathy; 
“what is the matter?” 

“I am too warm,” was her heedless reply. 

“Why ensconce yourself in the open window then?” 

“Because I was so cool,” she replied, so little to 
the point that he shrugged his shoulders with surprise 
and began to give her more serious attention than the 
duke believed him capable of. 

“The fact is that, since the wood of Boulogne was 
cut down and the young trees are so feeble, the wind 
that comes over it is too strong for the true Parisian. 
You will catch la grippe,"' 

“Why should you distress yourself on my behalf?” 
she inquired with much surprise, and forgetting the 
vexation which his interruption had caused her in her 
watch of Gerard. 

“Can you ask me thatf" 

He spoke with such profound feeling that she was 
astonished. It was not hard to remember that he had, 


58 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


not long ago, declared that he loved her; but then 
from whom was a married woman to expect the first 
insulting but almost inevitable addresses but from her 
husband’s dearest friend? The expression, “I love you,” 
has the great advantage of being clear, and yet it is 
a phrase at once elastic, sonorous, empty, insolent, 
stupid and useless, according to who utters it. 

‘T see that 3^ou did not credit me,” he added, with 
grave annoyance at the blow to his self-conceit; “but 
that was why this husband of yours authorized me to 
say anything to you that I liked, which, it is plain, is 
never you like.” 

“He was right,” retorted Catherine, having lost sight 
of Gerard in the swim which had encompassed him 
like bees on a flake of honeycomb. 

“And since you cannot believe in my love, yoM 
could not in my friendship? That is another matter, 
for I am not forbidden to make the test of that.” 

She sighed, and quickly recovering a sarcastic tone, 
she added: “I put no faith in either,” 

“What do you believe in, then?” 

“In nothing.” With a happy smile as if this nega- 
tion v/as a kind of felicity. 

“You must have man}^ pains in your loneliness, ” sug- 
gested Guy. 

She seemed amused by his being earnest as the 
Chatelaines must have been when they heard the moral 
o.f the merry tale chattered by their jester. Never 
before had Guy Deshaltes been suspected of anything 
but the most shallow persiflage. 

“Well, yes — I have headaches, sornetimeg,” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


59 


"That is not the sort to which I allude; these are 
heart-aches," said he, searchingly. 

"I do not know what you mean; nothing that our old 
Dr. Ramonin cannot charm away?” 

He closed the window, through which the breeze 
came strong into the lofty room and swelled the 
silken curtains with Malines lace edging, like the 
sails of an Oriental galley. 

"Are you afraid I shall catch the fashionable com- 
plaint?" 

"Not exactly that, but you still tremble; it seems 
to me the first stage of a fever. " 

"Thanks. Call Dr. Ramonin, that I may revive old 
acquaintance. He will recommend me some remedy/ that 
will cure," under her breath she murmured: "or 
kill!" 

"I am not so sure about the antidote, but,” said 
Guy, with a smile that broadened as he gained in con- 
fidence, "but I wager that I know where the mischief 
is." 

And indicating the duke, who was making himself 
agreeble to some new arrivals in the place of his wife, 
thus monopolized by his friend, per order, and to M. 
Mauriceau, still perambulating the gardens with his 
successor in business, to whom he was showing what 
eminence a man may reach on bobbins of thread and 
parcels of dress-goods, if he only accumulates 
enough. 

"He does not love you." 

"What follows?" she asked sharply. "Pests like 
you! " 


6o 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“It is not the consequence, but a fact; you do not 
love him.” 

“It would be a greater misfortune if I did,” said 
she, with another smile of serenity. 

“Just so; but the worst of all is that he will squan- 
der your wealth.” 

“That is my father’s lookout," she returned con- 
temptuously. “But I took you to be one of my hus- 
band’s—” 

“Harpies? vultures." 

“No; friends.” 

“It is the same thing. But you mistake. I am one 
of his companions of the dinner-table, the billiard- 
table and the card-table.” 

“Knights of the Round Table. And since a man 
cannot love and be true to both husband and wife, 
Lancelot takes an option for the disconsolate 
Guinevere? Too late, my chevalier. You should have 
presented yourself when I was in the marriage-market. 
I was so guileless that I would have believed you, 
and, . as you are of as good and ancient a family as 
the Septmonts, my papa might have given me to you 
as readily as to him. Perhaps it v/ould have been 
much the better. You are a traveled gentleman, and 
having learned that there is nothing lost by being 
polite to a woman even after she is a wife, you would 
probably have treated me tenderly, and for that I 
should have worshiped you.” 

“Poor woman,” thought Guy, who had no doubt on 
the conduct of his noble friend in the seraglio of con- 
nubial life. “You speak the words which are for me 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 6l 

the sailing signal,” he said, aloud. “I shall not be 
one who adds to your troubles. I am going on a 
tour of the world. ” 

“What heroism,” she railed at him. “It is the way 
of you men to mend a broken heart. A little excur- 
sion and you come home well as ever." 

“You say that very positively! ” 

“I know it to have been tried.” 

Guy set to reflecting, but he only puzzled himself 
without seizing the clue, and he said: “Do I know 
the experimentalist?” 

“It^s another young gentleman,” she replied warily. 

“One who loved you?” 

“He said he did so,” but the answer was so low that 
Guy rather read it by the movement of the pale lips 
than heard the words. 

He came near to asking if she had loved the man, 
but frank though she had been heretofore, he could 
not believe he would be clearly informed on what was 
her concern alone, and he contented himself with in- 
quiring if the adorer dated from before the marriage 
or after. 

“It does not matter! ” 

“I can ^guess,’ as Miss Vanness says, when she 
conjectures. It was prior to the happy day.” 

The shot had told, for her color came anew, while 
her lips, fiery red, muttered, “Have it your own way.” 

He divined the grounds for her agitation; it was 
fever, but a fever of the heart; the gallant who had 
gone afar to calm his hopeless passion had returned, 
had been seen by the unhappy wife in this motley 


62 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


gathering in the grounds, nay why not in this same 
room, for he had noticed the outbreak of her emotion 
at an early stage? 

“I see that you still love him?” he ventured to say. 

With a killing smile and a contemptuous curl of the 
lip she tried to intimate that hatred was a mild name 
for her changed sentiment. But Guy was sure that 
no man would scorn this beautiful creature, and he 
promptly rolled up his battle-flag, like one who saw 
that the procession was over. But Guy was a good 
fellow, and a champion of the woman who would never 
recompense him for his services — for the good reason 
that such are priceless. 

“Whether you love him or hate him now, it is the 
same thing, if once he had the signal honor of deserv- 
ing your affection,” he politely said. “Shall I go and 
bring him to you?” 

“He has been here, and fled as if I were the pesti- 
lence.” 

“Would you like me to go to him to remain with 
him, and cheer him up? I am not of the force of 
Dr. Ramonin in medicine, but I can ^minister to the 
mind’ love-sick. I engage from the knowledge of the 
case, with the powder of sympathy, as the quacks 
say.” 

“Are you capable of doing this?” she said, with an- 
imation and her eyes sparkling with hope so that, 
with her returned color, she was transfigured and the 
most charming in the apartment. 

Deshaltes pressed his hand on his heart to imply 
that he was capable of any act for her. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


63 


“But how about your own flame?’’ she mischievously 
protested, joyous once more at having found a confi- 
dant, the next best thing, to the lover, when the latter 
is one who must not be avowed. “What is love with- 
out jealousy?’’ 

“What is love without devotedness?’’ retorted Guy, 
with an earnestness which convinced her that he was 
sincere. 

“Try me,’’ he said as energetically as the proximity 
of scandal-mongers allowed. “Tell me the truth, and 
I swear to you that while I cannot cease to love you, 
T will love you in the manner that will be a reproach 
to neither of us.’’ 

The duchess shook her head sadly. 

“And one day,’’ she responded, “before a great 
while — no one can tell what will happen — am I to take 
a Lover Number One, from love — Lover Number Two, 
through spite — and others from the sinful habit ac- 
quired? And the friend will expect to be one of rhese 
lovers; is it not thus that the guilty course is run? 
Allow me to tell you that I do not understand anything 
of these ingenious and tacitly approved-of gallantries 
which deceive both the husband and the original 
lover. The day when I am sure that I love — and, 
above all, that I am beloved — I will belong to my love 
entirely. I will want to monopolize all the life of the 
man whom I believe worthy of me. I should give him 
all my own, and I should depart with him — ’’ 

She was interrupted by a sign from the enthralled 
hearer, surprised by this ebullition of long-pent-up 
emotion: a footman was drawing too dangerously near. 


64 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


He was carrying a card on a platter of massive silver, 
elaborately graven with the armorial bearings of the 
family which had enlisted his giant figure, and clothed 
him in its resplendent azure and gold. He bowed as 
he offered this excuse for his intervention to extricate 
Guy Deshaltes from a peculiarly embarrassing posi- 
tion, and his mistress, with a languid air, took the 
pasteboard. 

“The lady who sent in this card to your grace, ” said 
the lackey, in a grave voice befitting his dignity, “is 
waiting for the answer in one of the rooms in the 
lower portion of the mansion." 

“What impudence!" ejaculated the duchess with a 
vehemence which made Deshaltes start, but the mag- 
nificent English Goliath winced not in a muscle. 

‘Who is it?" inquired Guy, marveling. 

She tossed him the card scornfully for him to read, 
not only the name in the peculiar type called “Mad- 
isonian," which seemed Gothic to the two French Pa- 
risians who scanned it, but some writing on the reverse 
side in a hand without individuality or a trace of sex 
as it had been scrawled by a self-feeding needle-pen. 

“Miss Vanness?" exclaimed Guy, in as profound 
amaze as the duchess, but without her aversion. 
“What a dilemma! what reply are you going to 
make?" 

The duchess strode between him and the statuesque 
footman with an indignant bearing into the midst of 
the apartment, and said to M. Deshaltes, in passing 
him; “My answer will be the one that ought to be 
given." 


CHAPTER IV 


THE AMERICAN GIRL 

As if puppets moved by the same wire, all the ladies 
and gentlemen formed a horseshoe-shaped semicircle 
before the hostess, who said in a loud, clear voic^: 

“Can any of you, my friends, oblige me with certain 
information regarding an American or English lady of 
the name of Miss Vanness?” 

To her amaze it was not one or two replies that 
came, but many, a mass, an avalanche — for it was 
plain that there was not one of the coterie who did 
not know of the person by hearsay, for almost all de- 
clared that they had never spoken a word to her. As 
for the gentlemen, their husbands or the bachelors, 
they were thoroughly well-informed, but as they were 
fond admirers of the lady, the sincerity of their ac- 
counts might be distrusted.' It appeared that Miss 
Vanness held -a kind of open house for the chief 
lights in the social galaxy of Paris. 

“This is a good story,” said Deshaltes, “which Berne- 
court brings of her from Monaco. Out with it, Berne- 
court. ” 

Bernecourt was a dark-eyed, hook-nosed, free-lance- 
looking youth, who did not require much pressing to* 
relate as follows; 


5 


65 


66 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“I was at the last of the public gaming-halls of 
Europe, merely looking on at the game, not playing—” 

"Of course!” exclaimed the chorus, while one or 
two of the male hearers winked, for the narrator had 
cleared them out not so long ago at "blind hookey.” 

•‘I was giving more attention, I \ow, to the players 
than to the table, when I suddenly saw a remarkable 
figure standing and imitating me, with a smile of 
which I am not poet enough to describe the singular 
fascination. ” 

"Cut that! ” interposed Deshaltes, who was sure that 
eulogy of another woman was not what the ladies 
were expecting. 

"She was attired in a fla7nme-de-po7i€he silk with a gor- 
geous necklace and ear-pendants of amethysts which 
made the jewel-appraisers’ mouths water. Tall and 
slender, her lovely head emerging from a Medici col- 
lar) reminded me of the picture in a Milan gallery 
where the artist has portrayed Satan tempting Eve, as 
an upright serpent having a human and feminine head. 
Her long, snaky fingers were crisping up bank-notes, 
and both hands insinuated themselves among the 
heads and other hands with a grace which seemed to 
deserve the pre-eminence they assumed. While others 
were rebuffed or repelled, she continued to put down 
fresh stakes and collect her takings without being 
impeded. 

"I heard an American at my elbow, who was con- 
templating her with pride that she was his fellow- 
countrywoman, say in allusion to her perseverance in 
elbowing others aside, that it took ^that kind of girl 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


67 


to get there’ — meaning to arrive at her destination. 
She played the highest limit, the maximum, at every 
go. It seemed to me that, young though she was, 
rather girl than woman, she was seeking for an emo- 
tion which would not come. I reckon that she lost 
upward of eighty thousand francs before she turned 
away to go, saying, as if it were the dropping of a 
paltry score of gold-picees, d am down on my luck to- 
day?” From such fine and delicately chiseled lips, I 
assure you that the slang expression was altogether 
out of place. To tell you the truth — for I do not see 
my sister present — I dropped into the rooms ne:jtt day, 
more to see this startling creature than the roulette. 
She came indeed, but to win an even hundred thousand 
francs, which she looked down upon with as little loss 
of self-control as on the previous occasion. “It is 
luck coming my way again,’ she remarked, in the 
same unruffled tone, partly fevered and partly frigid, 
which gave the hearer the sensation of eating a Jap- 
anese hot ice-pudding. 

“Pushing the heap of notes and coin toward the in- 
spector, she said: ‘Be so good. Monsieur, as to send 
me this pile in. the morning.’ Whereupon, taking one 
of .ha arms plentifully offered her, she sailed out of 
the rooms, dazzling the most brilliant women like a 
star fallen in a woman’s shape. I knew her escort of 
cavaliers — all leaders of fashion, and — and I obtained a 
presentation to her. Since then, I have called on her in 
town, and find her the same elegant beauty, devoid of 
emotion, and surrounded five deep by ardent courtiers.' 

“A chapter of a modern novel to be entitled “The 


68 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


Arch-Adventuress,” sneered ^vladame d’ Hermelines, 
“it is clear enough where the mone}^ won at gaming 
comes from^ but it is not on the gains from baccarat 
that a palatial establishment can be kept up in Paris, 
where you men are peers of the professional card- 
sharpers, who are driven — poor fellows! to take refuge 
on the Atlantic steamers. But where does that come 
from which she loses so lightly?” 

“My dears,” broke in another dame of vast expanse, 
on whom .a trimming of moonlight beads radiated like 
a Circassian coat of mail, “I saw her at the opening 
of the Delirante Theater; she had such ^rivers’ of 
diamonds inundating her somewhat thin shoulders that 
she seemed a second electrolier.” 

“And attracts as many butterflies!” said Madame d’ 
Hermelines. 

“From what source do these rivers flow?” inquired 
Madame Calmeron, who was ponderous of physique 
and tried to make up for the effect by a forced 
sprightliness. “Did she invent a new Complexion 
Wafer or a Sanspareille Liquor?” 

“My dears,” remarked another kind soul, “the rev- 
enue of a quack medicine trust would not suffice for 
the display she made among the American Colony at 
the first night of Bassinet’s fiasco, the opera of ^Prince 
Pharimonde’ — M. Deshaltes christened the row the 
halo of halos ; for these daring Republicans vied with 
one another in wearing coronets — na}^ crowns picked up 
from the brokers who have been at the sales of extin- 
guished princely families. Madame M’Crokay and her 
lovely daughter who married something Roman, the 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


69 


amateur reportress for the ^Yankee Envoy/ Von Bello- 
witz of the ‘Londoner/ they were all thrown into the 
background by the veritable blaze of Miss Vanness. 
Between ourselves, it’s rather severe on the lady 
representatives of the Democracy of America that they 
shine in diamonds on a demi-toilette occasion like 
British peeresses at the Queen’s own drawing-room!” 

In the laughter which resounded, a little man in 
black with the green ribbon of some Turkish order at 
his button-hole was seen trying to obtain an audience. 
It was Madame Calmeron’s husband, the legalized ap- 
pendage of the last speaker, 

“Say a good word for the target, Calmeron/’ ob- 
served Guy. 

“It will excuse my wife saying a bitter thing 
for the pleasure of being cutting. It is not to 
advertise my house that I am compelled in justice to 
my client to say that we have received over two mill- 
ions of francs for the account of Miss Vanness this 
year.” He slyly paused to give the ladies time to turn 
over this morsel and continued, “not to mention a 
similar sum which she already honored us with the 
deposit of, and I have no doubt that the Bank of 
France would honor her drafts to at least the like 
amount.” 

Calmeron did not often make a hit, but when a 
banker of his solid position does speak it carries 
weight by its subject which a wit would like to secure 
by his finest shaft. 

‘T dp not keep our books/’ observed Madame Cal- 
meron, a little hurt, for after all selling and buying 


70 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


gold is a trade, and the aristocratic element was in the 
upper hand around her; “so, perhaps, we may look to 
you for a hint from what quarter this tremendous 
income comes?” 

“From the Golden States.” 

“Proprietress of a mine, like the M’Crokays?” 

“The gentleman who sends it on owns a gold mine, 
among other things,” proceeded Calmeron, swelling 
in importance at holding an auditory enthralled for 
once in a drawing-room as he would a meeting of 
shareholders to whom he read a company’s report. 
Mr. Madison Clarkson is a living example of the 
opportunities and recompenses of life in the Trans- 
atlantic Republic; he was a river-fisherman’s boy, a 
raftsman, a sawmill proprietor, the owner of a whole 
region of forests where a fire overrunning a hundred 
acres is no more than a cigar-light, a gold miner, a 
fleet-builder, a politician whom the President consults 
to choose for the foreign ministers, a philanthropist 
who endows hospitals and academies like a European 
State — in short, he is a potentate whose steward has 
to keep maps of his lands as a Lord-lieutenant of the 
district over which he rules. He is the most tire- 
lessly enterprising, richest and honorable man in his 
wide country.” 

“And this most honorable man is her father?” 

“Oh, no; on the last happy occasion of my dining 
with Miss Vanness — ” 

“What!” shrieked the ladies with one accord. 
“With Madame Calmeron, too?” 

She indignantly protested that her husband solely 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


71 


was invited. “And very wise of her, for I should not 
have dreamt of going.” 

“The young lady acquainted me with the relations 
of my chief client and the famous Mr. Clarkson. He 
was her husband. ” 

“Her husband! ” a cry in which even the least per- 
turbable of the gentlemen joined. 

“A married woman — under her maiden name — not 
even a grass-widow! she has a real husband, then,” 
said Madame d’ Hermelines; “how very, very naughty 
it was of some one who said she was never seen with 
any husbands but ours!” 

“Stop, stop,” interrupted Calmeron. 

“Let him explain,” pleaded Deshaltes. “What 
extraordinary creatures you are! you always blame us 
for speaking evil of women and yet when Calmeron is 
going to speak well of one, dash me if you will listen 
to him! Go on, Calmeron — you make Miss Vanness 
more of an enigma than ever — a wife who is no wife.” 

“If we were as familiar with divorce as the Ameri- 
cans of the newer and more progressive States, you 
would surmise the paradox. Miss Vanness, who was 
lawfully Mrs. Clarkson, became as lawfully Miss Van- 
ness again bv procuring a divorce from our man of 
enterprise. He sends her funds, not in the quality of 
ex-husband, but as agent for her and part-proprietor 
of her bonanza farm, immense sheep-ranch, metal- 
liferous mountains, and all that.” 

“That is different,” said the duchess; “but still, a 
woman in this anomalous state can hardly expect 
that men should call on her with their wives — “ 


72 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“That is not it — she will not allow any callers but 
our sex,” said Dr. Ramonin, coming from a useless 
search for Gerard, who had disappeared as if the 
modern residence of the duke was honeycombed with 
pitfalls and dungeons like the castle of his mediaeval 
ancestors. 

“Only men?” exclaimed Madame d’ Hermelines; “in 
that case, let us drop the subject. Her house, is not 
a dwelling, but a house-of-call for men about town.” 

“A man-trap 1 ” added Madame Calmeron, who was 
not going soon to forgive a woman for having so much 
idle cash at a banker’s as Miss Vanness, or her hus- 
band, or going to dine at her table. “What did she 
bait it with to catch our Cato of a doctor?” 

“I will tell you all,” replied Ramonin with a twink- 
ling eye which to those who knew him promised some 
fun in st'^re. “In the first place, by yirtue — ” 

“By virtue?” echoed Deshaltes. “You forget that 
you are speaking among those whom you have known 
from their birth! ” 

“By virtue of my profession,” continued the fashion- 
able Galen tranquilly, “and m}^ right as an observer 
to go everywhere and see everything, I called on Miss 
Vanness. You, ladies, would not know, and you, gen- 
tlemen, do not care — but it is a sad fact that the State 
is a niggard in its treatment of its laboratories. It is 
not any of you who will imitate the generosity of those 
Mr. Clarksons who think no more of giving a city a 
library, or a university a gigantic telescope, than you 
of presenting your winning joc]:ey with the official 
stakes after a race. One day I was in despair, and in 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


73 


my bitterness ^inspired’ an article in a newspaper, 
painting our distress; the young gentleman whom you 
have noticed coming here with me and who was then 
exploring an untrodden tract of New Mexico, had sent 
to my department some medicinal herbs of which the 
natives and the old Spanish historians said wonders. 
A contribution of inestimable value for European ther- 
apeutics, for the universe was drying up and crum- 
bling away for want of a few pieces of silver. Only 
the next day, I received a letter from Miss Vanness 
who had read the article. She expressed herself happy 
for the opportunity to repay in some measure the hos- 
pitality which she owed to France — ” 

“To the men of France,” interrupted Madame Cal- 
meron, nodding her Junoesque front toward her mite 
of a husband. 

“She begged permission to offer ten thousand francs 
for our experiments. Naturally I went, as the profes- 
sorial head, to thank the generous donatrix, whom I 
found to be gracious, and more than even as highly 
informed as the generality of her sex in her country. 
It soon came but that, merely to understand physi- 
ology and to be of utility to her sisters, she had 
walked the wards of a hospital. It was therefore a 
colleague whom I took dinner with, for she asked me 
to stay, and M. Calmeron will remember that we 
tasted, for the first time, some California wine, 
which, upon my reputation as an epicure, might com- 
pare favorably with our foremost vintages." 

“M. Calm.eron is not likely to forget it,” said the 
banker’s wife, with a smile which would turn the 
sweetest cru into vinegar. 


74 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“And are you not going to sound her praises, too,” 
asked the duchess, awakening from the reverie into 
which the mention of Gerard’s name had thrown her. 

I have not a word to say because, though honored 
with an invitation, I never acted upon it.” 

“Afraid that she is a Circe who, not content with 
bewitching all men, tests on them at her table the 
New Mexican herbs which may not be so beneficial 
as the native historians and Spanish pretend?” said 
Madame d’ Hermelines, spitefully. 

“To sum up, then,” said the hostess, putting on the 
mock air of a judge, “we have before us simply an 
adventuress who has more self-government, more 
audacity, more luck and more substantial wealth than 
her predecessors. She has traveled widely, and ever}^ 
stage of her progress has been marked with some 
scandal or a tragedy printed with the blood of her 
dupe or her victim. You say this divorce of hers was 
entangled With a mystery about two brothers who 
fought a fatal duel for her hand. You named the 
great Russian noble who perished in the opera-house 
which he built at Bucharest for her to appear, if for 
one night only, in an opera of his composition. You 
say that the famous diplomatist Malandraz blew out 
his brains because he had imparted to her the secret 
of the rifle which renders his counry formidable even 
to Germany itself. Now,” she resumed, glowing and 
gathering strength for her denunciation, “let her 
receive Socrates and win Pericles for a husband, like 
Aspasia, who seems to be the model of these Lad}^- 
wranglers who want to revolutionize society where the 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


75 


blue-stocking was allowed only on sufferance mixed 
with derision; let her offer her riches to rebuild anew 
Jerusalem or Thebes, as Phryne did; let her captivate 
a king like her countrywoman, Lola, the dancer — for 
it hardly becomes us to boast when we have immor- 
talized Ninon de I’Enclos and Dubarry — but, with 
these conditions, she must keep her Liberty Hall, dor 
men alone, ’for there cannot be anywhere in the world 
a woman who would consent to receive her.” 

“You will pardon me,” interrupted Guy Deshaltes, 
“but you are mistaken in your conclusion from not 
understanding this new kind of being. I have met 
them in their own country — for their imitators in Eng- 
land and in Russia depart widely from the originals. 
This woman would not attempt to play the tyrant 
over her sex if ours did not refuse to let her be our 
ally and our companion. Either we or she must hold 
the whip while the other drives, or in the contest on 
the box the car of society will be upset and both be 
trampled under the hoofs of the flying horses. These 
women who are uplifted by their surpassing beauty 
are always enveloped by fiction with a throng of vague 
stories. Despite the fierce golden light upon them, 
no one can vaunt that he has seen the core. It is 
asserted that she caused a duel in one place and a 
suicide in another. Is it true, or not? Who can tell? 
She herself may not be certain in the matter. That 
men should ruin themselves to smother them in the 
first fruits and the finest flowers, it is possible; fools 
and their money were made to part, that fashionable 
tradesmen should retire every few years. That she 


76 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


would stoop to pick up the flowers, I beg to doubt — 
she has dependants hired to do that. Everybody loves 
them, however odd they are, and treats them with 
respect, for they wrest respect from the cynic 
himself. For all I know they may step through 
stain and flood without being soiled. They rep- 
resent woman almighty and triumphant, soaring 
over sordid realities, giving a fresh zest to the 
life of amusement, and allowing nobody the right to 
say that they conquered them on a given day. We 
men adore her, while you women hate her because of 
her power and fascination being in such a superlative 
degree. When she is Emma Lady Hamilton, the 
hero Nelson is her slave and the Queen of Naples her 
footstooL You spin around and think that you are 
revolving independently of her. Make no mistake! 
she is the pivot of society.” 

“Bravo, my dear Deshaltes!” 

It was the duke who walked into the room which 
had the aspect of a hall of debate where a fiery orator 
dumfounds the other speakers. 

“I do not know what the subject is, but I am sure 
that it is one worthy of the Muses since it has warned 
you, so reserved and icy, into an eloquence of which 
the Count de Mun would not be ashamed.” 

“One moment,” interposed the duchess, confronting 
her husband with a steadiness of nerve which stag- 
gered him. It is more than ever evident that we are 
combating with no commmon foe. Monsieur, it is 
necessary that you should know how this person whom 
you champion so earnestly without knowing who it 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


77 


is, and whom you may champion still more warmly 
when you hear her name— how she makes advances to 
enter the society which only have the garrison, gone 
out to fraternize with her beyond the walls. I have 
here the visiting card of Miss Vanness, on the back 
of which she has favored me with these lines: And 
disdaining to read a second time, she held out the 
card by the tips of her finger and thumb as one might 
exhibit a curious venomous flower, and with bewilder- 
ment showing on his usually well-guarded face he 
repeated in a low but audible voice: 

“Miss Vanness solicits of Madame the Duchess des 
Septmonts the honor of being received by her grace 
this evening of tne fete day, and to take a cup of tea 
with the friends whom she admits into her intimacy. 
As Miss Vanness is a stranger to the Duchess des 
Septmonts, she desires to pay fifty thousand francs for 
this cup of tea, for those unhappy people for whom the 
fete was organized.” 

“What are. you going to answer, dear one?” inquired 
the duke, who had recovered his equanimity and 
seemed to be asking about a mendicant at the door. 

“Monsieur, until you espoused her cause, I thought 
that such intrigantes should be kept in their eccentric 
orbit, never long intervolved with ours and only so 
at long intervals. Perhaps she disdains to be a duch- 
ess and, like the citizens of ancient Rome, is proud 
to be one of the Republic, pure and simple. On the 
day when she joins our cohort, she must suffer our 
discipline, wear our uniform, rise and march as we 
do; then she would abdicate her power and her attrac- 


78 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


tion, which rest in her oddity. If the rattlesnakes of 
her forests attacked man in clusters, he would extermi- 
nate them; it is because they dwell isolated that they 
are the more deadly and the more successful where 
they fascinate. She crushes us women of the upper 
classes, because we never know with what weapon to 
contend with her — with what counter-bane to meet her 
sting. The only means to overcome her is to have her 
in the same pit, whence escape to the defeated is not 
possible, and there unmask her — slay her and grind 
her head under foot.” The gentle duchess uttered the 
programme with an energy which thrilled all hearers, 
and Dr. Ramonin was delighted over the transforma- 
tion in the creature whose life, was partly due to his 
skill. “This is mere soundings of the trumpet,” said 
Septmonts impatiently. “To the end: how will you 
answer?” 

“In these terms, now,” rejoined the lady, touching 
the spring of a dainty Davenport, of which the pearl 
inlaid lid magically opened in halves and formed a 
writing slab, on which lay ready for use all requisites. 
And she wrote with a diamond-tipped gold pen dipped 
in a deep black ink, on thick, plain whitepaper, which 
the vulgar would not have expected to see at the 
disposal of a duchess, the following words. The duke 
alone was privileged to read them over his wife’s 
shoulder, but she recited them aloud in a measured 
voice as she traced them so that not one was lost to the 
farthest ear of the interested company. 

“The Duchess des Septmonts will receive this even- 
ing Miss Vanness and will offer a cup of tea, provid- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


79 


ing that a gentleman can be found among the relatives 
or friends of the Duchess des Septmonts, who will take 
Miss Vanness into her presence on his arm. In the 
other event, it will be the Duchess des Septmonts who 
will put fifty thousand francs into the fund of the 
charity, in order that the poor shall not be losers.” 

The silence was complete and oppressive which the 
duchess broke by saying: 

“Now, gentlemen, after what you think and have 
said of this lady, is there one among you who will 
consent to offer his arm — for thus I will receive her.” 

The silence began again. Certainly, it was a try- 
ing moment for Ramonin, Calmerin and the duke, to 
specify no others. The pause was growing onerous — 
painful, when Septmonts, shrugging his shoulders a 
little with the last of his fit of embarrassment, 
stepped into the breach. 

‘T was only waiting to leave one of your guests the 
pleasure, and the honor,” — he subjoined, on fancying 
that some one tittered, “of presenting Miss Vanness 
to you, madame.” 

He was interrupted by the abrupt entrance of Mau- 
riceau. Having heard with dismay that the American 
had invaded his daughter's home, he rushed as it were 
to defend her, and the silence in the reception-room 
had deceived him into believing that he should find 
her alone. Under any circumstance, his look of sur^ 
prise would have drawn a laugh, but the spectators of 
this scene in the bosom of the aristocratic family, even 
the most frivolous, presaged a tragedy impending. ” 

‘Good,” said the duke, “you arrive in the very nick 


8o THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

of time. I see you are aware of who is standing at 
our doorway? you do? good again! I am only in 
wonder that you had not offered your escort and 
brought the waiting one with you. For,” he said 
wickedly, “I made the acquaintance of yourself at 
Miss Vanness’.” 

The ladies glanced at one another and bit their lips, 
for it was nobody’s secret that the American had 
brought about the union of the duke with the silk- 
merchant’s daughter. 

“But this is delicate grouna and I feel that it is I 
who must rush in where foo— -angels fear to tread! I 
do not believe in the figments which are perhaps re- 
echoed by you all, even those whom Miss Vanness 
honors with her trust and friendship. I hold her to be 
a person worthy of our society. As, under the cir- 
cumstance which gathers us together, she has taken a 
step which is a proof of good taste and generosity — as 
in short, my dear wife, you stipulate that the priv- 
ilege of entering into your circle depends on the arm 
of one of your friends or your kinsfolk — your nearest 
relative, your father, appearing to abstain — why, it is 
I, your best friend, I believe, who must carry out the 
programme. ” 

The duke was really going too far; while his wife 
clinched her hands and closed her lips till they were 
blanched, and Guy Deshaltes begged the speaker to 
revoke his announcement, Mauriceau stood the image 
of perplexity. 

“When I set about anything, I know what I am do- 
ing,” said the duke emphatically, and frowning. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


8l 


Ramonin and the other gentlemen stood aside, while 
their wives and the other ladies flocked to the duchess, 
whom they expected to see faint at the crisis. She 
was made of other metal, and it was wrath which 
had the upper hand in her agitated bosom. M. and 
Madame Calmeron prudently proceeded toward the 
door by which Septmonts was making an exit, as is 
said theatrically, not unworthy of a tragedian, when it 
was thrown open and the footman who stood at its 
side, thundered from having been upset in his nerv- 
ous system by the puzzling inroad: 

“Miss Vanness !’’ 

“Be calm and collected,” whispered the marchion- 
ess in a tremulous voice. 

“Was ever such audacity!” ejaculated Madame 
d’Herraelines, aghast. 

Septmonts was nearest the door. He was, there- 
fore, the first to see that Miss Vanness had not taken 
the liberty of coming up alone. But he was stupefied 
to see on whose arm she was lightly leaning, as she 
advanced with the light carriage of a princess to 
whom all the world had rendered homage since she 
first trod the flower-strewn path. 

It was Lucien Gerard. 

He had at last reached the threshold and was going 
away, perhaps never to cross it more when he had 
caught sight of Miss Vanness whom impatience on the 
result of her novel bid for introduction had driven in- 
to the passage from the waiting-room where she had 
been sequestrated. In a moment he was informed of 
her predicament, for which she had herself to blame. 

6 


82 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


He offered the arm of which she stood so sorely in need 
and escorted her to the portals where the duke ap 
peared too late. 

“I have the favor to present Miss Vanness/’ said 
Gerard in a voice forcible without being strained, so 
that the melody of it was some alleviation of his bold 
step, as only the welcome guest of the hour. “When 
I was on the threshold of life and without a helping 
hand she risked all to lead me back from death open- 
ing its arms to clutch me, and it w^ould be shame on 
me if I refused or even hesitated not to accompany 
her whither my guard, it appears, would remove all 
barriers. Madame,” he continued to the duchess, 
“here is one who has so many praiseworthy qualities 
that I hope they will blot out the demerit that they 
obtained a no more distinguished friend of yours to 
be her guarantee.” 

No doubt the duchess had neither eyes nor ears for 
another than the speaker. But it was not so with her 
guests. Well-bred though they had the pretensions 
to be, they displayed the simple curiosity of children 
before the cage of a grizzly bear. They devoured the 
lady with their eyes. But there was this to be said 
in their excuse that Miss Vanness was the incarnate 
despotism of woman, with a charm which would have 
won in any circle the name of the “Fascinatrice. ” 

That year, yellow was the rage, and she had at- 
tired herself in a walking costume of shades of that 
trying color with a subtle art which was a living les- 
son in the play of the gamut which one hue may pos- 
sess. From the Henri Deux toque of amber Genoa 



I have the favor to present Miss Vanness.” — (p. 82.) 




THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


S3 


velvet to the tip of the buff morocco shoe, she exhib- 
ited that novel style of apparel which is English for 
a suggestion of wear, and Parisian for its refined fan- 
tasy. Reina was tall, or seemed so from not being 
robust ; her countenance, too, was rather longer than 
a strict oval, but the nose had not a sharpness nor any 
suspicious curve; contrary to most of her race, she 
had not only a full set of teeth but not a glint of 
dental gold showed in any interstice of faultless 
pearls. The mouth had too much resolution to please 
a European man of the towns, and her eyes were too 
defiantly bright and too prone to fasten on the per- 
son she addressed, to concord with ideas derived from 
conversation with convent-educated girls. 

Here she stood in the midst of the titled dames, 
but she was an element which, as Dr. Ramonin would 
say, would never coalesce. She had apparently won 
her footing, if not the game; but no ; to have been 
introduced by the duke might have fixed her position. 
Gerard’s gallant act in repaying her hospitality to a 
foreigner, was natural^ — was the correct thing, but not 
enough. 

Though superb, grand and adorable, she was still 
an outcaste Pariah, though by her own fault. In the 
States, she had unsexed herself by assuming the mas- 
culine coat in order to move with freedom among 
men; and here, in the walking costume of the latest 
fashion, a little modified by her suggestions, she was 
mannish. Her bearing was too combative; her glance 
sought an antagonist, not a friend; she seemed to 
have entered on a mission — to accomplish some feat, 


84 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


perhaps desperate, and then retire still dazzling, like 
those fay queens of the stage with whom the eleciric 
beam vanishes with their exit. 

She quitted the arm which had supported her, 
without even the slightest nod of thankfulness, and 
taking a step toward the duchess, she spoke in a firm 
voice as though she divined that she had carried the 
bar away with this onset. 

Did she know that it was the escort whom she did 
not value correctly, whose presence checked the anger 
with which the hostess was consumed? 

“Madame, ’’ she said in excellent French and aided 
by the nasal twang which alone lessened the witchery 
of a suave and insinuating voice, “no one could be 
more touched than I by your forgiving my anticipat- 
ing the agreeable reply to my request — ’’ 

“Certainly,’’ said the duke, fretting at the action 
of Gerard having pushed him into the second place 
in this scene. 

“I had relied on the duke presenting me exception- 
ally to your grace; but the person matters not, as 
long as I shall be able to do a little good under your 
patronage. “ 

The footman who had admitted her, stood at the 
door, holding up the Aubusson tapestry, not a little 
curious to see the upshot for the relation to make 
him a hero, in the servants’ hall. His mistress lifted 
her hand for his attention and said in a voice which 
she vainly strove to keep clear and steady: “Another 
cup! ’’ 

As she crossed the large room toward the tea- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


85 


table, the footman with long and measured strides 
reached it on a shorter line before her. She poured 
out the tea with her own hand, having only to de- 
press the urn which swung over a spirit lamp, and 
while she was doing this, the enforced guest saluted 
the gentleman familiarly as among old friends, with- 
out as much as even noticing the ladies, as if they had 
been carved images. The eyes of the duke and of 
Gerard avoided hers, simply because they were fixed, 
like duelists’ examining each other before the swords 
were handed them for the conflict. 

‘‘How do you do, M. de Bernecourt,” she said 
sweetly; “I am expecting to see you soon, for I am 
going to have a house-warming of the residence of 
the late Mile. Schweiner, of whose executors I have 
made the purchase — ” 

This made the ladies’ eyes open more widely, for 
the comic opera diva’s “bonbonniere” was quoted at 
a price at which even a Mauriceau would balk. 

“I rely on your being on my visitors’ list under the 
new roof-tree — and M. de Hermelines as well.” 

Oh, the savage looks the wives gave the implacable 
speaker as she poured hot shot into the unfortunate 
husbands, under the forts — their wives — which her 
boldness silenced. In^ truth, they feared that, at the 
next minute, she would have the coolness to invite 
them. 

Was ever a cup of tea so long preparing? if the 
duchess were dosing it with poison, she could not 
have taken longer. 

At last, it was ready, and rescinding her intention 


86 


THE AMERICAN^GIRL IN PARIS 


to employ the lackey, she handed it to the intruder 
to have the gratification of self-conceit in not shrink- 
ing from matching herself with her, face to face. 
Was she not doubly a rival since she had coaxed 
Lucien into espousing her cause? Sne v/as glad now 
that, before his sight, she could bear t., e comparison 
with this parvenue who dared to measure herself with 
the peeresses of the Old Country. It is tr^:e that 
Catherine was a duchess of yesterday’s creation, but 
duchess she was, and at least this designing woman 
could not take away her title in taking the duke’s 
stray hours. 

“Thank you, madame,” said Reina, sipping at ease. 
Then seeing Ramonin who was trying to glide be- 
tween the duke and Gerard and also cut him off from 
contact with Mauriceau, she called out: “Oh, is he 
your medical adviser too? Good afternoon, M. Des- 
haltes,” she continued in the same tone, perhaps be- 
cause the silence would have been complete unless 
she spoke; “I have been warned that you sometimes 
malign me. I regret it all the more as yor lave been 
in America, and you ought to have learnt that it pays 
best to treat all women with sugary delicacies. If 
ever you change your erroneous opinion of me, I shall 
be most happy to receive you and make you welcome 
among friends. I am delighted to see you at home, 
M. Mauriceau! I must compliment you on having such 
a pretty child of a daughter — I mean that, beside you, 
she seems youth itsejf; and I am very happy,'’ she 
went on, trying to ensnare Gerard with a tigerish 
glance of appeased fury, that I conduced to her 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


87 


elevation — although neither of you seem to bear it 
long in mind. I am habituated to being carped at, 
but not to making no impression. I must try next 
time we meet to do that which will prevent you 
forgetting me.” 

With a trembling hand, Mauriceau took the cup 
which she had leisurely drained and passed it to the 
footman. Then as leisurely, she took out her tablets, 
on one leaf of .w^hich she wrote a line or tv/o which 
she showed to Calmeron who nodded; she i^eft it on 
the table for the duchess, who would not approach 
to take it. 

“For the poor!” she said. 

No one breathed a word; no one stirred, not even 
Gerard, who had received a reproachful glance from 
the duchess. To delay was to spoil the effect which 
she had brought, of a loaded shell in a cartridge fac- 
tory. She chose for her road to the outlet a line 
that would bring her near the hostess. 

“It would make me most happy, madame, if you 
would return my call,” she said so that all could 
hear, but, in an undertone meant and received by her 
own ear alone, she added caustically: “we will talk 
about our mutual friend, Lucien Gerard, whom I love 
perhaps as much as you, although he will perhaps 
never love me as much as you.” 

All that the others heard was her “Good bye!” 
spoken in the tone of one who expected it not to be 
a farewell. 

If Gerard had the intention of again baffling the 
duke — designedly, this time — by offering his arm, he 


88 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


was not quick enough. As the duke took the Ameri- 
can lady down the grand stairway, he whispered : 
“Will you not for the future believe that I love you?” 

“Anybody can love, my dear fellow,” she replied; 
“but everybody cannot win a woman’s love.” 

Scarcely had the two left the room before the 
duchess aroused herself from the stupefaction of 
terror into which Miss ' Vanness’ parting shot had 
plunged her and suddenly seizing the cup from which 
she had drunk, she smashed it on the floor, saying to 
the footman, who jumped as though a bombshell had 
exploded between his rounded calves: “Throw all the 
doors open! after that visitor, no one is too vile to 
enter here.” 

“My child — my dear child, “stammered Mauriceau, 
but she repulsed him and walked out automatically 
by the door which led to her own rooms. 

“Oh, Charity,” said Dr. Ramonin, taking Gerard 
out in the midst of the crush of all eager to depart, 
“what cruelties are perpetrated in thy name.” 


CHAPTER V 


WHY, WITH SO MUCH LOVE ABOUT, ARE THERE UNHAPPY 
MARRIAGES? 

Paris is not a city into which people come by pure 
chance, and for that matter, there is no such a thing 
as chance, which is a god solely for the ignorant. 

On the day after the incident at the duke’s where * 
his wife had borne herself to the approval of Gerard, 
for he naturally thought all she did well done except- 
ing her falsity to him, and of the Marchioness de 
Rumieres, a better judge of aristocratic bearing. Dr. 
Ramonin called at Septmonts’ house. Lucien could 
hardly take this step, and the doctor felt bound to as- 
certain for the comfort of his young friend what was 
the effect on the principal actors. But his call looked 
like labor lost, as the duke, after conducting Miss 
Vanness to her carriage, with a parade of being favored 
to cavalier her, went straight off to his club, where he 
played cards till two or three in the morning. Ac- 
cording to his lights, he ought not to disturb his lady, 
although, it is said, married couples prefer the “wee, 
small hours” for arranging their differences raised dur- 
ing the day; it is the favored time of philosophers, 
anyway, so that they are not an exception. The duke 
was therefore asleep in his own apartments, or if 

89 


90 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


risen, grumbling over his toilet to dissipate the last 
of his vexation. 

He admitted that the American girl had been some- 
what overbold, but he was ready to tell all comers that 
the duchess had met the inroad with too much impo- 
liteness. When a person sets up as the patroness of a 
charitable institution and, more than all, when she 
holds the benevolent picnic in her own gardens, there 
are some acts which she ought to learn how to do, 
if she is not capable of divining them on the spur of 
the moment. Miss Vanness was a foreigner, and in 
that capacity, might be allowed to be quaint, original 
and eccentric. This right had often been accorded 
to other exotics too often for anyone to be nice about 
giving her a loose rein. 

Her whim for offering an enormous sum for a cup 
of tea was a queenly one, and the duke thought that 
his wife ought to have received her cordially, as by 
duty bound, made her the best courtesy and let her 
have the tea. At that price, she might have thrown 
a cake into the bargain. Most of the ladies standing 
by would have acted that wa}^ — receiving her kindly 
and pocketing the fifty thousand francs, • which would 
have been the end of the matter — at least to those who 
do not know that the Miss Vannesses rarely take up 
the end of a thread without unrolling all of it off the 
spool. The duchess, whether to avoid him or not 
while his wrath was warm, had gone out to early 
church. 

“I will await her return,” said the doctor, install- 
ing himself with the ease of a celibate^ which is an- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


91 


other name for the sybarite, in the reception-room 
where Miss Vanness had passed a quarter of an hour 
in tribulation and where testimony of her stay was 
manifest to his nerves by the unfading scent of her 
favorite perfume, made uniquely for her. 

The worthy doctor had a great deal to ponder over. 

From the time when he caught a suspicion that the 
wedding of Catherine Mauriceau and the Duke Maxi- 
min had been no ordinary occurrence but one due to 
the far-sighted machination of Reina Vanness, his 
sympathies, already enlisted on behalf of Lucien, 
urged him to check the continuance of the unhappi- 
ness of the parted lovers and, by bringing them into 
the union which never ought to have been deferred, 
thwart the astute rival. 

He had no better opinion of the duke than the rest 
of the world. When he captured the daughter of the 
“Three Sultanas,” as the heiress was nicknamed, the 
alliance was considered a lowering of the crest of 
the Septmonts, but on a little reflection, it was seen 
that it was not so very “risky,” outside the St. Denis 
district, where the trading classes abound and where 
a nobleman is still an object of worship as a figure 
of no ordinary clay, although he might be ruined and 
his reputation blem shed, nobody would have let him 
have a daughter. Any hackney-coach driver could have 
told Mauriceau where the descendant of the Crusaders 
passed too many nights, and any sheriff’s officer could 
have fully informed him on the ducal finances. If 
the girl’s mother had been alive, a woman of intelli- 
gence, irreproachable morals and loftiness of soul, the 


92 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


sacrifice would not have been consummated. She would 
have counterbalanced the arts of Miss Vanness when 
she seduced Mauriceau into becoming an instrument 
of her vengeance. What a vengeance, too ! Ramonin 
thought of it with shuddering. He was horrified with 
the picture of that girl learning all about the love of 
Gerard, from being at his pillow as his nurse while 
he raved in delirium, and then speeding across the 
ocean to allure Mauriceau into giving his child to the 
spendthrift and "used-up” peer, so that a barrier that 
was insurmountable would be reared between the 
parted hearts. 

Catherine had not been infected with her father’s 
vulgar ideas of rank, and she saw that her class had the 
advantage of the superior ones in being able to marry 
according to inclination. But she did not understand 
men, or that Gerard had a capital in his honor, his 
strength of will, his working power, and his intelli- 
gence. She took his departure to the v/ilds as a de- 
sertion. She did not believe that the great fortunes 
discovered in the West are not the conclusion of fairy 
tales. She doubted she should ever see him again, 
and unable to comprehend why her lover did not over- 
throw everything in order to win her, she sank into 
despondency with Lucien far away. Old Mauriceau 
profited by this dullness to break her in for the fulfill- 
ment of Miss Vanness’ project, and Catherine, saying 
that "if I am doomed to be unhappy, it may as well 
be under a ducal coronet as the storekeeper’s wife’s 
bonnet,” became a duchess — and remained certainly 
as unhappy as before. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


93 


Dr. Ramonin had no doubt that the two youn^ peo-- 
pie were intended for one another, since their affection 
was unmistakable. He concluded that their union 
would yet take place. The obstacle — the duke — did 
not trouble him more than a chess-playet is worried 
about a pawn which he sees is too far from the lines 
of the problem to affect the issue. At ^ fit period, he 
would disappear by the intervention of the gods, as 
the ancients use '' to believe. It is true Septmonts 
was alive, able to draw checks on the bank where the 
father-in law had deposited the inducement for this 
match, and with the human form, he acted like human 
beings, but the doctor knew it was only a sham. To 
his scientific eye, Septimonts was merely a vibrion. 
Any reader of the doctor’s articles on this subject, 
which had its day of public attention, knew what a 
vibrion was. This is the name given to the vegetation 
springing from the partial corruption of bodies, visi- 
ble by the microscope and long mistaken for animals 
on account of a slight undulatory action peculiar to 
them. Their office is to move about to corrupt, dis- 
solve and destroy the healthy parts of the bodies 
where they reside. They are the work-people of 
Death. Society is a body, too, which decomposes in 
some parts, at certain eras, and vibrions of hurhan 
likeness then appear; they are not men or women, how- 
ever closely they resemble them, and they proceed 
unconsciously to spoil, separate and destroy the rest 
of the social body. It would be all over with us, 
according to the good doctor, if nature did not further 
life and was not opposed to its foe. Death is one of 


94 


TttE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


her methods — life is her aim. Hence nature resists 
these elements of destruction, and hurls back upon 
them the morbid principles which they contain. Some 
night when the vibrion has taken a drop too much, he 
blunders through the door of the elevator, which it 
assumes to be the room exit, and smashes what 
serves as his head on the ground floor. Or, if the 
cards ruin him, or his Miss Vibriona deceives him, he 
fires a pistol-ball into what he flatters himself is a 
heart, or he runs up against a real man, who is so 
much stronger than himself that he is crushed like 
a nit. Men who have thoughts on their mind, see in 
this annihilation merely an item of new^s —students 
like Ramonin see it is the operation of a law. 

He had reached this stage of his meditations while 
the massy footman hovered around him, knowing who 
he was and hesitating to try to obtain a prescription 
for the asking, for the epidemic of influenza, which, 
alas! had not spared the gentlemen of the gentlemen, 
when Madame Rumieres came in to give a turn to 
the musings of both. 

The marchioness was seeking the earliest news of 
the duchess. It was not sheer love of scandal, but 
sincere friendship for the new recruit to her exclusive 
army. Catherine was so gentle when not roused, so 
modest and so winning, that the marchioness had 
gradually given her special notice which from regard 
became friendship. 

How are we this morning, doctor?” she exclaimed, 
offering her hand in a Suede glove artistically wrink- 
led; “I was delighted with the incident we witnessed 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


95 


last evening. Our little Cit.^s daughter has won her 
spurs. I do not say that our little rascally duke came 
off so badly, for his offering to hand in that American 
girl had an air of chivalry to cover his impertinence. 
The creature herself cut the best figure. Where do 
they acquire the trick of tone and carriage? There 
must be a special training school for these witches of 
the backwoods who snatch all the prizes of the matri- 
monial arena from under our daughter's hands. Ha, 
ha, ha! was not the banker rich, that Calmeron, who 
had dined with us and acknowledged the draft of that 
splendid intruder, while chuckling over his discount 
for cashing it! Our society is getting to be a pretty 
Tutti-frutti, in which bitter oranges abound. But 
our duchess was enlivening — the smashed china, like 
the finish to an act of drama, the order given for the 
mob to be let in since she could no longer be particu- 
lar when a Miss Vannessa had the entree — my husband 
said that he would have given his mustaches — all 
that is dear to him in this world — to have been a 
looker-on.” 

“Miss Vanness — not Vannessa, who is a character in 
the history of authors, I believe — is not an ordinary 
woman, and her insolence is based on her right or her 
force of mind.” 

“Where did my pet pick up her lofty style — not in 
the convent school?” 

“It came to her naturally when she was stormed 
in her castle before those whom she esteemed, stand- 
ing passively by and the pilot of the invader the very 
person whom she hoped to be her truest defender.” 


96 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“Oh, that young M. Jeremiah — “ 

“Gerard. He is my friend — my prot6g6, as the 
duchess is 3 ^ours. It is only natural that an old 
Coelebs like me should adopt a son, while you have a 
family — ” 

“A family? you ought to know that my daughter has 
made me a grandmother!” returned the marchioness 
with a droll wry face. “She snubbed me the other 
day when I had the impudence to make some sugges- 
tions on the proper management of the nursery. I 
paid her out, though, shortly after, when the baby 
picked up a gray hair and said it was mine. Nay, my 
darling, I said, it must be your mamma’s! As for 
my son, he is given to confiding his heart troubles to 
me, much after the manner of his father. He will 
soon be building a nest of his own, and flying away.” 

“What on earth did you marry for?” queried 
the doctor, amused. 

“Because I thought I loved M. de Rumieres; but it 
was more the wish to be loved than any desire to 
love, for I believe that we women do not love — the 
whole thing is that we want certain men to adore us. 
That makes us believe that we love; but as soon as 
the love has been inspired and the triumph obtained, 
it is seldom that we think of anything else. The goal 
which I have attained is not the seventh heaven which 
at sixteen I imagined it, but I help those to reach it 
who interest me. I am like the subscribers to the 
Opera season, who know all the pieces in the reper- 
toire by heart, and can listen to some of the stock 
morceaux with gusto, while we encourage the young 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


97 


ladies to go through the series. I am eager to carry 
the duchess farther than the piece where the lovers 
are divided — I should revive both Romeo and Juliet, 
and let them sit many a time and oft in the balcony, 
but a baby or two should play at their feet while 
Romeo lolls on the rail to which his silken ladder 
swung, and smokes his cigar — puff, puff to the lullaby 
of Juliet rocking the cradle.” 

"You are as good a woman as any who never wore 
a marchioness pearl and ermine crown,” exclaimed 
the doctor, not ill-pleased to meet a colleague in the 
plan which he conceived. 

And, since the coast remained clear — the duke not 
coming down and the duchess not coming in — he 
acquainted the lady with the story of the love of 
Gerard and Catherine, checked by the ambition of 
Mauriceau and a stronger block clamped across their 
path, thanks to the infernal prevision of Miss Vanness. 

“Why it is a demon," said Madame de Rumi^res 
trembling as much with a kind of terror as with 
resentment. “She is as rare a bird as your young man 
who loves platonically in a land where the word is 
without sense. He looked like a fine, manly fellow. 
My son is thought a credit to the army, but upon my 
word your engineer could eat him like a radish. Tell 
me, is there something in the air of America which 
gives the appetite by which one can devour space 
and enemies? All is clear to me, now. But for this 
intermediary, who hoodwinked our stupid Mauriceau, 
poor Catherine would have made a suitable match and 
they would be so happy. I do not mean that I would 


98 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


give my daughter to him; it is all very well for a 
Duval to marry a Durand, of course, but I have always 
been taught, and I shall always teach, that it is uncon- 
ditionally forbidden to unite the daughter of a noble 
house with a commoner, however handsome and cele- 
brated he may be. Just imagine on a visiting card, 
Madame Duval, nee Montmorency!” 

The doctor paid the expected tribute of a laugh. 

“Lucien is the most honorable of men,” he said 
earnestly. “Some base-born men have the sentiment 
of hojnor in the same degree as some nobles have the 
greed for money on any terms. There is this differ- 
ence between honor and nobility; honor cannot be sold 
because once it is sold, it is no longer honor and 
it is worthless. Your duke sold his title for the 
merchant’s money, but Lucien Gerard, having prom- 
ised that Catherine Mauriceau, and no other woman, 
shall have his name, will die unwed rather than tam- 
per with his pledge.” 

Madame de Rumieres was convinced of the possi- 
bility of such resolution, though she might never 
understand it. 

“Do tell me, M. Ramonin, you who are able to make 
all things clear, how is it that, with such a superfluity 
of love upon the earth, there are so many unhappy 
marriages? ” 

‘T should offer the solution at once were you not a 
woman,” he answered with a smile. 

“Do 5^ou mean that it is improper?” 

“Not at all, but it is an abstract matter.” 

“And I am not an American nurtured in a college — 
I am too ignorant.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IST PARIS 


99 


“Not so much that, as that you cannot give your 
attention long to any single subject,” he replied, 
“frankness allowable in the medical fraternity.” 

“Give me a trial,” she pleaded. 

“When you cease to understand me, you would stop 
me by your inattention,” he remonstrated. 

It was rather a dilemma, for she would be compelled 
to hear him to the end under penalty of being deemed 
stupid. Still as she insisted, he began: 

“The cause of marriages being rarely happy, not- 
withstanding the amount of love promising that bet- 
ter result, arises from love and marriage having scien- 
tifically no connection whatever. They belong to two 
orders completely different.” 

“Ah! I am glad you do not class them — marriage 
as order, and love as a disorder.” 

“Love is a matter of physics and marriage is com- 
prised in chemistry.” 

This was so far from anything in the lady’s com- 
prehension that she did not trouble to understand it 
but frankly laughed. 

“To explain,” continued the professor, insensibly 
falling into the tone he used at his lectures, “love 
forms part of the natural evolution of the being. At 
a certain age, it is produced independently of the 
will and without a definite object. The desire of 
loving is felt before that of being loved. This is why 
love belongs to physics, as that treats of matters 
existing in the interior of things; while marriage 
is a social combination included in chemistry because 
that science treats of the action of bodies upon one 


100 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


another and the resultant phenomena. The great law- 
makers, religious leaders and philosophers who insti- 
tuted marriage on the basis of love purel}^ and simply 
experimented in physics and chemistry in the highest 
and finest degree, with the aim of extracting out of 
them the family, morality, labor and consequently the 
happiness of mankind, which is contained in those 
products. So long as you conform to the first propo- 
sition, and choose two elements fit for combination, 
the operation goes on of itself; the experiment is a 
success, and the result must come forth; but if you 
are so ignorant or so clumsy as to try to mix two 
refractory elements, you meet with inertia instead of 
fusion, and the two elements will remain forever face 
to face without any power to unite. In human kind, 
however, as there is a soul, besides, that intermediary 
between God and man, punishment falls on the creat- 
ure who scorns the spirit, and instead of inertia, 
there arises a shock, explosions, accidents, catastro- 
phes, tragedies.’' 

The subject was dry and the treatment not attract- 
ive to the woman of fashion, but she was impressed 
by the solemnity with which the doctor spoke, and it 
was in bated breath, without the frivolous laugh with 
which she had hailed his commencement that she in- 
quired: 

“According to you, the duke and duchess are refrac- 
tory elements?” 

“They will never combine unless — ” he hesitated 
before adding, “unless there comes up a new element 
which will aid them to unite.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


lOI 


“You mean that if a gallant excites the husband’s 
jealousy and makes the wife see to what a precipice’s 
edge coldness has brought her, they will come together 
to repel the household foe?” 

“Not so much a lover, as love — the element lacking 
for the first experiment and which prevented the result 
by its absence. It may come in any of three forms: 
in the child, which is motherly love, in the faith, 
which is divine love, or in the earthly shape of a 
lover.” 

“Has the duchess gone to’ church this morning, 
think you, to seek religion as the consolation?” 

“I do not know; but I don’t believe that, like her 
father, she would be proud of being the mother of a 
dukelet. ” 

“You dreadful man ! do you not know that a lover 
never saves a married woman — he destroys her; he is 
a remedy but a mortal poison.” 

Dr. Rarnonin shook his head, as if he thought this 
depended on the lover. 

“Do you mean to tell me that there are men so noble 
and truly loving to respect the woman whom they 
cannot wed?” cried she with no little incredulity. 

Firm in his judgment of our hero, his hero, the 
doctor smiled like one with full conviction. 

“I can hardly believe it,” said she. “I can under- 
stand that two Chinese — in china — may ogle each 
other eternally from one end of the mantel-piece to the 
other — particularly if there be a clock between them; 
but a Frenchman and a Frenchwoman in flesh and 
blood — oh dear, no! I cannot swallow that, as M. 


102 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


Mauriceau says. Have you n»ver been in love that 
you talk so?” 

Ramonin intimated that a scientist has no time to 
make love. 

“Well, doctor dear, I will admit that your M. Ger- 
ard and our duchess may love without a spot falling 
on her ermine, for some time — with the mantel-piece 
between — say for years. But what will eventually 
happen? These things must come to an end even 
when they had a very imperceptible beginning.” 

“There is no right end to such a love as theirs,” 
said the doctor measuredly, “but marriage. One 
of these days, you will hear the happy phrase: ^The 
duke is dead! the duchess has married again?’” 

“Doctor, this young fellow has turned your brain, 
aftec turning my dear Catherine’s head.” 

“Hark!” They heard the duke’s voice; he was in- 
quiring the whereabouts of his wife of j;he servants at 
the foot of the marble stair where they congregated 
to greet him. On hearing of her absence and that two 
callers were waiting a responsible head to the house, 
he hastened to hide his vexation and welcome the 
marchioness, who was a family connection of his, and 
the doctor. 

“I noticed that the- duchess was not in the best of 
spirits yesterday, ” said the latter professionally, and 
palliatively, for he knew that his friendship toward 
Gerard would not endear him to Septmonts: “I wish 
to learn how she feels this morning.” 

“She seems to be hearty en©ugh,” replied the duke, 
"considering that she can race out, without her break- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS IO3 

fast, or even a cup of chocolate, to tempt the rheuma- 
tism always lurking in church corridors. However, it 
is a change to see her wide awake in the morning, for 
usually she is still asleep when I come home. We 
are talking of your daughter,” he continued, “for the 
enlightenment of M. Mauriceau, who came into the 
house from his portion of it by a private way.” 

“Some women, mostly married ones,” observed the 
marchionesss, “have no comfort save in dreams. It 
is a habit, this sleeping when the husband is by, 
which is more agreeable than the morphine one and 
not so pernicious.” 

“I am not so sure about that,” whispered the doctor, 
unable to suppress a witticism, though it went 
against the sentiments he had lately proclaimed. But 
the duke heard neither remark. He had accosted his 
father-in-law with acerbity, saying: 

“This very much resembles a family council, and I 
am not all sorry. M. Ramonin is one of your oldest 
friends and whatever he does or says will be for the 
welfare of your family. Hence, we may have an ex- 
planation on the subject of your daughter, who made 
a scene yesterday which was as painful as anything 
in the world could be to me. I understand she is at 
church, where, indeed, she may well go frequently till 
she learns Christian charity! However, hoping for the 
best that, though it v/ill come late, and as I cannot 
waste my day in awaiting her, I must entreat you, my 
dear M. Mauriceau, to tell her that her behavior is not 
such as consorts with the habits of my society. That was 
the reason of my publicly giving her the little lesson 
which she received.” 


104 AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

Madame de Rumieres shook her head slightly, but 
the self-opinionated duke took it for a nod of approba- 
tion, and said: 

“I see that you are of my way of thinking, cousin. She 
ought to have accepted the money from the American 
lady. ” 

“I certainly should have done so,” admitted the 
marchioness, “but your wife may have reasons not to 
act as I would have done. Over and above what is 
tittle-tattled about Miss Vanness, the story goes that 
you show her attentions that a lawful wife has the 
right to be jealous upon. To say it all in one sen- 
tence, you are accused of being on the very best terms 
with Miss Vanness.” 

The doctor remained neutral, but Mauriceau approved 
the speaker with bobs of the head and encouraged 
her to proceed. 

“Pshaw! that is only one slander the more. I am 
not on even good terms with Miss Vanness — more’s 
the pity!” 

“Really, you might have refrained from that post- 
script, which annulled your previous denial,” said the 
lady. 

“Well, admitting that the libel were true, these 
little peccadilloes are matters which a lady of fashion 
does not stoop to notice.” 

“Not when the lady of fashion loves her husband?” 
energetically remonstrated Mauriceau. 

“My dear sir, you are well aware that your daugh- 
ter does not like me,” said Septmonts with lofty un- 
concern. “Far from me any idea of reproaching her 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


105 


for it. Love cannot be commanded to go here and 
come from there. But, whatever the reason, we are 
man and wife: I promised protection to your daugh- 
ter, and I am not going to break my promise,” with a 
threatening glance which he did not want lost upon 
Dr. Ramonin as the silent advocate of the disturbing 
element which hovered unseen but sensible in this 
council. “In exchange, my wife promised obedience 
and fidelity, to both of which I hold, particularly the 
former, as I undertake to guard the other. When the 
duchess returns from church, I shall be obliged to you 
'if you will kindly tell her that I firmly — nay, absolute- 
ly — rely on her returning to Miss Vanness the visit 
which that lady paid her yesterday. Miss Vanness de- 
sired it — she has requested it — she has to me reiterated 
the desire when I saw her to our door last evening; 
I could not refuse it to her for private reasons. Under 
certain circumstances, one visit entails another: but 
in this case, this return visit engages nothing further. 
In short, this must be so; it is my express will. Au 
revoir, cousin ; you will excuse my tearing myself 
away, but I have an appointment. Good-b 3 ^e, Ramonin! 
"See you later, my dear M. Mauriceau.” 

This was not the first breeze which had ruffled the 
sea under the shadow of the Seven Mounts, though 
perhaps it was the roughest and the keenest; Mau- 
iceau took the mission without any repugnance. 

”1 shall bring her to reason,” he assured his noble 
son-in-law. "But do not let the matter rest there, but 
comeback to make the reconciliation lasting.” 

"Egad! I ask nothing better,” said the duke, de- 


Io6 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

lighted at having carried all before him. “Smooth it 
over, my kind papa, smooth it over with Catherine.” 
And lighting a cigar in the doorway, he took the cane 
which a servant was waiting to be relieved of, and 
strutted forth, saluting, v^hen he had reached the 
street, the brougham in which his wife was returning 
from the church. The flourish of the malacca was 
thrown away, for, absorbed in the gloomy apprehen- 
sions with which she had wrestled during the sleepless 
night and which appeal to the altar had not dispelled, 
she did not perceive him. 

“There’s a model husband," said Ramonin to the 
marchioness. “If yours were of that pattern, what 
would you do?" 

“I should at the first do all he liked, and then, I 
should do all I liked!" was the candid reply of the 
woman of the world. 

“Come, madame," said Mauriceau, who began to 
regret he had let himself be made the go-between in 
the family jar, “Catherine must come in presently — 
what do 5^ou advise in this matter?" 

“That she should obey and pay the lady the visit 
which she sets so much store upon. The duke is 
right, as far as that goes. Besides, she is an enemy, 
and it is always a good thing to have had an inspec- 
tion of the enemy’s stronghold before the war opens. 
I say, in short, that it is wrong to have discussions 
which may grow serious over matters which are not 
so. Nobody will blame Catherine, but all will cry out 
against her prompter, her husband, if the affair is an 
ugly one in the outcome. You, gentlemen;^ our papas 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS I07 

and lords and masters have decreed that you are wis- 
dom concentrated and that we ought to obey you. Let 
Catherine obey, therefore. The main thing is to have 
peace on the domestic hearth; ” she rattled on, for 
Ramonin kept out of the one-sided debate and Mau- 
riceau did not care for the details so long as the 
marchioness supported him and the duke. 

He stood a little in awe of her, besides; the mar- 
chioness was not only a lady of title by m.arriage but a 
great lady who knew how to “handle” the fashionable 
folk, as he said to his cronies. He was sorry that his 
daughter was not just like her. She would become so, 
under her tuition, he expected. She had not the birth, 
she was not so old and the habits of a line of high- 
born ancestors had not been transmitted to her, but 
she was so quick to learn, so beautiful, and carried 
herself so proudly. Yes, the style would come. 

“What were you saying about the marquis,” lie 
politely inquired, while eying the door distractedly 
to catch the first sound denoting that his daughter 
had returned home. 

“My husband used to run after any woman who made 
a sensation in Paris. His caprices did not last long, 
luckily, but while he suffered from them, his one 
idea was to usher them into my house. I fancy that 
he thought a good deal of my opinion. I always gave 
it favorably to his whim, whether the new-comer was 
a Brazilian diamond-dealer’s daughter, an English 
brewer’s niece, or what you will, all the colors of 
the spectrum, as the doctor would describe the variety. 
Of course, I always pretended to be blind toward his 


I08 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

infatuation, and he took the utmost precaution to 
shield me from suspecting anything, if it had not been 
town-talk. In a while, these ladies, when they saw 
my poor old boy gallant a fresh conquest into my 
drawing-room, used to call me into consultation at 
the horrid way he was going on. They would say my 
friendship for them was only lukewarm, and fall on 
poor me, tooth and nail, for not being jealous of the 
latest guest, for their sake! They would as good assay, 
though in covered terms, that I was an idiot not to 
see what that person came into my husband’s house 
to do. To wreck peace! I had to feel piqued and 
declare to the complaining party that she pained me 
to the heart, and that if she went on in that style any 
farther, our relations would be impaired. I threatened 
to tell my husband that these querulous friends 
seemed to be false friends, and then he would say T 
wonder you did not see through her long ago?’ * The 
consequence was that she would be quieted; if not, 
I would execute my threat, and my bosom friend and 
I would meet no more — except in somebody else’s 
parlors. Your daughter should do likewise, Mauriceau. 
Women in our position are never compromised by 
the bad conduct of others — only by their own. Tell 
her so. Are you going, doctor? you can have a seat 
in my carriage. I want to hear about the gold mine of 
your prot^g^: I have a fenv thousands lying idle at a 
paltry three per cent.”’ 

Mauriceau was left alone to await his daughter, for 
the callers were certain that they would only be in the 
way of the conflict betwen father and daughter. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS lOQ 

“The marchioness is entirely right,” he thought. 
“Here is a couple that might be as happy as she and 
her lord. They have everything needed for that. I 
grant that the duke must have had one or two ances- 
tors who were plaguy disagreeable, for there is no 
concealing that he has a nasty way of saying things. 
When he might get what he wants by a little concil- 
iation, he exacts it in a rasping tone which gives one 
the desire to do just the reverse. Oh, here is my 
daughter.” 

Going out into the hall he waylaid the duchess as 
she came indoors from alighting from her carriage. 
He led the way into his own snuggery, but Catherine 
des Septmonts would not sit down to listen to reason 
as he suggested; in short, she hardly would listen to 
a word. 

“Enough,” she said curtly. “I shall not go to Miss 
Vanness\” 

“No? your husband will be angry.” 

“Let him be angry.” 

He had never before heard this voice of reckless- 
ness. 

“But he will persist. 

“I shall resist.” 

“But with such a disposition as his, the difference 
may extend far. ” 

“The farther the better, if it occurs between us.” 

“But it may be a serious breach.” He was deeply 
astonished. 

“If irremediable, it will be to my mind.” 

He stared at her as though she had gone mad. 


no 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“You cannot be in your right mind,” he said, “for 
everybody gives the same advice as your fond old 
father.” 

“That is possible. They have their reasons and I 
have mine. They may be poor ones, but I am partial 
to things all my own.” 

“Catherine, I assure you that there is nothing going 
on between that American girl and him.” 

“Then she is a luckier woman than I believed her. 
It is useless for 3^ou to talk. I shall not go over her 
doorstep. ” 

This stubborn disposition puzzled the other. There 
seemed something more in the matter than the pique 
of one woman against another. What grounds could 
there be for his daughter to defy both parent and 
husband? 

“I have it,” he suddenly exclaimed with a radiant 
face. “This all comes from your having seen that 
Gerard yesterday afternoon.” 

“It was well that the presence of a woman like my 
husband's friend should be counteracted by that of 
an honorable gentleman like mine. Yes, papa: 
Lucian Gerard is still my friend — I hope more than 
ever my friend, for since all the world is of your opin- 
ion — and that is, for me to humble myself to this 
foreigner — I never stood in greater need of a true 
friend. ” 

Mauriceau was silent. 

“Why do you not abuse him? sa}" as much in dispar- 
agement of him as you would say in praise of your 
American beauty.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


III 


“My dear, you go too far. I wish America were 
sunk in the Atlantic, since we are always worried by 
its pork, or flour, or its coquettes — to say nothing of 
it spoiling our sons who are misguided into going out 
there, and linger because they can elude the conscrip 
tion and drink a fair imitation of our wine.” 

“You need not have banished this one,” she felt 
like saying, but she was too miserable to make this 
natural friend of her^s an enemy by a sharp saying. 

He probably understood what she had on her 
tongue’s tip, for, sighing, he said: “Are you going 
away without a kiss this morning?” 

“No! have one with all my heart.” 

He was surprised and pained to find her brow ^s 
cold as marble. 

“What ails you, girl?” he asked, sorrowfully, like 
one who somehow feared he was no longer entitled to 
frank confidence. 

“Nothing,” was her mechanical reply, as she left 
the room. 

“You know that, come what may, I am always on 
your side,” he called after her, but she may not have 
heard. 

She did not turn her head, to smile at him to the 
last as had been her wont. 

“She is estranged,” he muttered. “It would not mat- 
ter if in turning from her father she went the nearer 
her husband. But there is something untoward in 
the whole matter — altogether the contrary to what I 
promised myself, and what that witch promised me 
when she enticed me into this match-making. It serves 


II2 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


me right. A man has no business to step out of his 
business. Look at the muddle all round: My son, the 
duke, marries beneath him and it works ill. Catherine 
marries out of her station, and things work no better. 
A woman of his sort would get along smoothly with 
him, I dare say, while he will go to pieces with Cath- 
erine not trying to help him, and she will be lost 
with him. He will break my bank — she will break 
my heart — and I honestly believe now that I would 
give every penny of my millions to be quits with this 
crew of aristocratic vultures. I do not see any way 
out of the whirlpool unless we can get a separation 
and let my lord run away with this foreign woman.” 


CHAPTER VI 


DR. RAMONIN’S panacea 

Catherine des Septmonts went to her suite with a 
weary step. She had not derived any alleviation for 
the distress which had robbed her of repose during 
the night. The priest had spoken the self-evident 
truths. He pointed out that she had little to com- 
plain of. She was young, and had beauty and riches 
above many of the favored of the capital. Her rank 
was an enviable one; the esteem that she had conquered 
among the nobles among whom she had ventured, was 
still more to be coveted. He suggested that she 
should beseech heaven for patience and resignation. 
Watch steadily, and succor would come in the bright 
morning of this dull, dreary and darksome night. 

“Think,” said he, “of the many poor creatures who 
were without homes, clothes, or even a mouthful of 
bread for their offspring, and you will see how far 
above any griefs that you can feel are what they have 
to bear.” 

But all this would never prevent the sufferer like 
herself from believing that the greatest torment was 
that she ached within. 

She had always tried to lessen the miseries of which 
her ghostly father spoke; if she met one of their vic- 
8 113 


1 14 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

tims now, she would have relieved him until there was 
not a trace of the affliction. She 'would have replaced 
it with joy and happiness, with some of the money 
which she possessed beyond her desire and perhaps 
her deserts. 

So, here she was again, with no one to solace her 
in her gilded misery. Who would restore her the 
illusions, the hopes, the faith and the dignity of her 
maidenhood? Where was the loving friend who 
would share with her his soul, as she would divide 
her purse with the unfortunate? 

Her father? she knew he was the author of her woe 
— though somewhat involuntary or at the worst too 
pliable a tool in the hand of the plotter who had 
wrecked her life, and doubtlessly another’s. 

Her husband? he was the deliberate author of it. 
He might have prompted the woman who tangled 
their life-threads almost indissolubly. 

These young men? of whom Guy Deshaltes was 
incomparably the best, for the}^ paid their suit in 
order to add shame to the burden which already she 
bore. 

In all the world there was but one to turn to — and 
he wavered on the margin of the forbidden ground 
where she was held in bondage. He appeared so 
much the nobler, handsomer, and brighter of wit than 
the others. It was he who had first set her heart throb- 
bing with novel emotion — the first whose hand ever 
met hers without their pulse falling into a harmoni- 
ous beating. He had inspired the first thoughts 
which the memory of her mother had not invoked— 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS II5 

the first dreams that ever disturbed her virginal slum- 
ber, and becoming a waking vision deprived of repose. 
To him she had given all that is contained of the 
ideal in a girPs heart. In a word or in a smile she had 
imparted it, without her knowing how, for Catherine 
had fallen into the habit of loving him before she was 
aware that it was love that enthralled her. 

One day he wrote to her: 

“You are rich, and I am poor; between us is a gulf 
which cannot be crossed. 1 have never loved, and I 
shall never love any but you. I meant to have devoted 
my life to you and I must now set it aside to solitude 
and labor. You will see me near you on the day 
when I have reason to believe that you are unhappy; 
when I am sure of it, you will see me beside you, and 
I shall be the supporter \)f whom you are in need.” 

Catherine had not understood this at the time, as 
she would have found it simple to live in poverty with 
him, though he could not think of living in wealth of 
hers with her. She was soon to learn what it is for 
an impoverished man to marry and live beside a rich 
girl. She thanked God that Gerard was not a Sept- 
monts to do that kind of thing. 

Ver}’ slender were the scraps of news and arriving at 
irregular and widely-parted intervals that proved little 
more than that Lucien was living. When, at last, she 
heard that he had attained a fortune, she wondered 
what more he lingered for — why he did not return 
home. At the sight of him, in the company of Dr. 
Ramonin, she was filled with hope and gladness. 

He showed himself merely to disappear. He must 


Il6 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

have wandered about the gardens among the sight- 
seers to inspect the features of her luxury. Strangest 
of all, when he came again, it was with that woman 
on his arm, whom she had detested ever since she 
learnt that through her instrumentality, she had be- 
come the wife — the thing — the tag of that man. 

It was not because Reina was without a history 
that European society was familiar with, that she 
had no origin of fame, no avowed source of income, that 
the duchess had refused to receive the interloper, for 
all this would have little mattered if she had taken 
the wish into her brain. But she would never for- 
give this kind of slave-merchant who had sold her to 
the Duke des Septmonts, in plain words, sold her; 
a bargain struck in her house, between her father and 
the duke. It was not enough that she should thus 
have tried to raise a barrier between the lovers whom 
only an ocean and a continent divided — what is an 
ocean, what a continent to those who really love? 
but after the pain and the affront of seeing-the woman 
in her house, came that of having her dare to whisper 
to her: 

“Come to see me, madame, a id we will chat about 
M. Gerard, who perhaps I love as much as he loves 
you.” 

This to a married woman, in the same room where 
her husband was standing — this was a shaft which 
struck to the heart. Whether she lied or spoke the 
truth, she evidently knew of her girlish love, and she 
meant to frighten her, mock at her and torture her in 
order to revenge herself for the slight the duchess in- 
flicted. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS II7 

But did she love Lucien? — was she loved by him? 
Had they met in the States, and under what circum- 
stances? If he had loved her, whether he loved her 
now or not, she did not know of what she would not 
be capable in her turn. To win him back — to retain 
him she might act as basely and wickedly as this 
rival. 

To whom should she turn? 

Guy Deshaltes had behaved like a gentleman; he 
asserted himself to be one of those friends who 
wished her happy, and whom nothing would discour- 
age in seeking that end. But she could not trust the 
secret of her heart to one so light. 

It was better to end all this tribulation in the quick- 
est and easiest way. She would go to Dr. Ramonin 
and obtain from him one of those draughts, striking 
to the life like lightning, and saved for those who 
were otherwise doomed to perish in agony too exquisite 
for a man to let even his worst enemy bear. 

Avoiding her father, seeing nothing of her husband, 
she let the hour come for her afternoon drive. But 
when her carriage was rolling through the park she 
gave the coachman a change of direction from the 
established route of fashion, and she was set down at 
the door of Professor Ramonin, in the Rue Madame. 

It was an austere building, and her footman, who 
remained on the pavement after having opened the 
carriage door and rung the house-bell, conversed with 
the coachman in subdued tones which the facade im- 
posed. A taciturn porter, whom not even this elegant 
turnout awed, pointed to the carpeted stone staircase, 


Il8 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

and she ascended to the professor’s flat, where the 
mahogany door was opened by a servant who might for 
his wooden visage have been own brother to the con- 
cierge. The doctor was at home, and she was not kept 
long awaiting him. 

Had he suspected the visit would occur? It was 
plain that it did not surprise him. But what she 
said, almost without prelude while he was just grasp- 
ing her hand, had the quality of thrilling him with 
as much painful wonder as his heart would hold. 

“Doctor, you helped me to come into the world — 
now I implore you to assist me out of it.” 

“I shall take great care not to do so without an 
adequate reason,” he replied, trying to treat it as a 
jest, though in poor taste. “Death is not a gay 
thing.” 

“Is life any brighter?” retorted she. 

”I cannot deal out my drugs without hearing the 
whole case. Speak my child. What has happened 
since that scene in your house? It alarmed me, and 
I called to inquire this morning — but you were out 
and your husband’s presence was disagreeable to me.” 

She detailed her wretched story, and bewailed 
the fact which she regarded as hopeless. 

“I cannot tell whether or not that American girl 
loves Lucien, but I will warrant his love for you 
alone. ” 

“They are old acquaintances — ” 

“She has a wide circle of acquaintances; but he is 
only one of the thousand to her.” 

“Who told you so?” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS Iig 

“He — a hundred times this five hundred days since 
he has returned to his country?” 

“When was the last time?” she asked, pretending 
to doubt. 

“This morning. I was not going to meddle with 
what does not accord with my age or my character — 
but Guy Deshaltes dropped upon me like a thunder- 
bolt — I did not recognize the Brummell of our day in 
one so agitated, with his collar-stud lost, his cravat 
twisted and his voice of calm flow quite faltering. 
He told me that Madame des Septmonts loved some 
one of my acquaintance, since I was such an old 
friend of her family. He said that you were very un- 
fortunate and he entreated me to do all I could for 
you in this stress.” 

The duchess sighed. The poor fellow really had a 
heart and had acted finely. 

“You say that Gerard loves me?” 

“He has come home solely on your behalf, for he 
heard in some way that you were unhappy — or, rather, 
he guessed as much on learning from the newspapers 
which I sent him, that you had married for a title.” 

“I see it all. He will under one pretext or another 
come into collision with the duke, and there will be 
a duel. Which ever kills the other, I will be the 
most wretched of women. No, doctor, do not turn me 
from my first intention — give, oh, give me the means 
to end my despair!” 

“Poor child, are you really resolute upon this ex- 
tremity? ” 

She raised her clasped hands upward with a touch- 
ing gesture. 


120 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“I ought not to refuse you your own solution of 
the dilemma, which you must understand better than 
anyone else.” 

“You will deal out the means of death — of relief?” 
she said in a strange unearthly joyfulness. 

He bowed with a sad but firm expression, and 
slowly left the room. She kept her hands enclasped, 
and prayed in order to calm herself before the return 
of the doctor with the fatal potion. But it was in 
vain that she attempted this means of quieting her 
nerves. After the assurance that Gerard loved her, 
her dominant thought was of him. But the course 
she had determined upon was the only one open. 
It would cause Gerard grief, but there would be no 
fear of her shame befalling her. On hearing the door 
gently open and a soft step reluctantly approach, she 
did not look round, but she held out one hand while 
she covered her eyes with the other. It was like a 
child, assured that the cup contained release from 
pain, but yet loathing to look upon it. 

“Thank you, old friend,” she breathed, with a 
choking in her throat. “No one shall ever know. 
Tell Gerard that I died blessing him.” 

But it was not a cold glass that she grasped me- 
chanically — it was a warm and palpitating hand. She 
turned around, but nearly fell to the floor — would 
have fallen but for the hand which tightened its hold 
and strongly upheld her. 

“Lucien!”she muttered. 

“Catherine! ” 

But he led her to an arm-chair, supported her only 


. V' '.. *' ' '' 



“ She turned round, but nearly fell to the floor.” — (p 120 ) 





THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


I2I 


until she sank down into its arms, and standing off a 
step or two, waited for her to recover from her emo- 
tion. 

This then was the doctor’s panacea! how cruelly 
had he disappointed her. No, he had rejoiced her, 
for she had not felt such happiness in three years! 
Was this a meeting of real persons — was this her 
beloved? for he had but flitted through her rooms 
yesterday — under her husband’s eyes, and that odious 
woman’s; she had not dared gaze on him steadily as 
now. It was he? He had not changed — nothing had 
changed — since his love was unaltered. As his eyes 
beamed on her, she was sure that the lovedight had 
not paled. He adored her above all in this world. 
Judging by her own repining, how he must have been 
agonized in this long parting. 

“Did you try to forget me?” she abruptly asked. 

He shook his head. He was greatly her superior by 
this touch-stone of love, for she had endeavored to 
obliterate him from her heart and mind. She had 
an excuse, however, since she belonged to another. 

“But you have remained free — to no one you have 
disposed of your liberty? ” she inquired, but in a care- 
less tone so sure was she of the answer coming to her 
taste. 

“Not one fleeting image has passed between yours 
and my ever-enrapt gaze,” he rejoined. 

“Then, that girl — ” 

“What girl?” 

“The one who burst into my presence last even- 
ing,” with a return of color to her cheeks and of 


122 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


anger In her eyes where satiated love had till then 
been disputing place with tears of ineffable delight. 

“Miss Vanness?” he questioned. “You ought to 
know all. I owe my life to her.” 

“Heavens! you were at the point of death? and I 
was not near. What would have become of me if 
that had happened? If your spirit had come to beckon 
me away, I should have rejoined you! sooner than I 
was willing to do at this moment. Why did you not 
send word to me? — you might have telegraphed to 
the doctor.” 

“What would you have done?” 

“More than any other. I should have left all to 
travel to your side and watch over you — nurse you 
back to life.” 

“Not so? they would not have let you go. Your 
father, your husband would have stayed you.” 

“No one could have done it. Now, I lost my oppor- 
tunity. That girl took my place. She tried to rob 
me of 5^ou there, as she is taking away my husband 
here. Oh, that she would be content with the ex- 
change. She does not want for money — these repub- 
licans are onl}^ greedy for distinctions. Can she not 
take the ducal title and leave me tranquil?” 

“She must have gleaned all she wanted to know 
from fragments of revelations in my fever, following 
my wounds,” continued Gerard, with an angry voice 
but low in tone. “She hastened to Europe before 
me, and contributed if she did not design the 
marriage which is so great a sorrow to me and to 
you.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


123 


“Above all to me, Lucien.” 

He believed her, even if the doctor had not been 
the partisan of the girl-sacrifice by her father. 

“You thought ill of me,” he pursued, “because I 
performed a simple act of politeness in escorting her 
into your presence. I saw in her then only a lady of 
the country where my reception was warm and help- 
ful, and besides, she is a kind of partner with the 
American magnate, Mr. Clarkson, who was her hus- 
band of a day — ephemeral union of which there are 
a few examples in the border States. Apart from this 
match of her contrivance she has always forwarded 
my interests. I did not know that she still wished 
you evil.” 

“Always — as long as you love me,” said the duchess 
sadly. 

“I doubt that she loves anyone or anything. Clark- 
son is a splendid man, and yet she separated from 
him for no reason — a whim or a fancy, just as she 
took a conceit for me.” 

“If she says she loves no one — that she loves you 
not, it is false,” said the duchess vehemently. “She 
never met a man like you. Do you resemble others? 
Would I have loved 370U if you had? in brief, I am 
jealous. Do you know what it is to be jealous?” 

In his eye suddenly blazed a fire which would have 
shriveled up the very soul of the Duke des Sept- 
monts if he had seen it, for he would have divined 
that he was the object. 

“I see that I am wrong. I forgot; but it is so 
sweet to forget. I beseech you not to make me re- 


124 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


member, the past is so dreadful; and you have been 
in anguish, on my account?” 

"So wretched that I should have thrown away my life 
among the savages, red or white — there is no lack of 
chances to lose one’s life on the frontier and in the 
mining-camp saloons.” 

“But you thought of your mother, fretting for you 
in the home so lonely. I was forbidden to call on her 
— my father disapproved of her name — your name be- 
ing mentioned. She is still living? Ah, you complain 
of being unhappy, when you have a mother to console 
you — one in whom you can confide the secret throes 
of the heart. Well, she will have a daughter now. 
Again we shall be under the same roof. Ah, we 
were tranquil in those times.” 

“Do you think that she would go to dwell where the 
least of your menials would pride himself as being 
above your companion? things are changed with me, 
Madame la Duchesse — my mother could live in a pal- 
ace, too, did she not prefer her pretty cottage covered 
with roses.” 

"I did not mean that she should come again to live 
with us, but that I would be living with you.” 

“You must be oblivious, indeed,” he returned, com- 
passionately as one speaks to a lunatic. “What about 
your husband?” 

“Can I regard that puppet of the American girl as 
a husband? What is there in common between me and 
that , burlesque of a man? I shall fling his title back 
to him — roll the coronet which he had dragged 
through the gutter and left in pledge at the pawn- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARI 


125 


broker's, once again into the kennel. Do you think 
that I ever prized the rank? At any rate, during the 
short period of my wearing it, I bore it more worthily 
than he. Besides, I can exist without craving to be 
duchess, but not without a desire for love.” 

While she was feverishly rambling, Gerard had been 
meditating. 

“Not to mince matters, and to speak plainly,” he 
gravely said, “I am to understand that you propose 
leaving your situation, and fleeing into seclusion here — 
or, better, on the remote edge of civilization?” 

“A wigwam —a hut of boughs and leaves — nothing 
but the sky to shelter — as long as you were mine,” she 
daringly and fondly responded. 

“Would you consent to be deprived, not merely of 
your rank, but of your worthiness, as woman? not only 
of your compeers' esteem but your own, and mine? 
I would not agree to it,” he proceeded steadily. “If 
I reappeared in your circle, and entered your house, 
it was not to abase — far less to debase you — to com- 
promise and to destroy. It was to show that I was at 
hand, to aid and sustain you. It was to fortify 
you against others, and perhaps against yourself. 
You have too long been without a support that 
would not bend, and you may rest on one now. I 
mean to save you. You would have cast away your 
life, which desperation would have broken your 
father's heart and mine. I prevented that, and now 
I am going to guard your honor, which is dearer to 
me than mine own. I do not wish to see in you 
aught else than what always met my eyes and was 


126 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


cherished in my memory — a sacred being, a souPs 
companion, the creature of God whom I as your hus- 
band should adore, the mother whom our children 
should venerate, the woman whom society should 
respect and glorify ! I never want to see you in any 
other guise.” 

She was weeping now — sobbing, but she listened 
spell-bound to such language as she was not likely to 
hear in the heights to which her weakness and her 
father’s aspirations had unfortunately carried her. 

"Events and men, however mighty the former may be 
and however cruelly the latter may act, cannot modify 
our conscience, and we ought not to permit them to 
lower us beneath our estimate of ourselves. I shall 
live and I shall die, for your sake, with no other 
reward than what you have not been able to give to a 
soul besides — your full trust, your esteem, your con- 
stant thought, your soul — that spirit in us which is 
divine and eternal!” 

She thrilled, and was supremely exalted by this 
address. She loved him doubly, immeasurably more. 
She lifted her hand t'o heaven and vowed to live in 
the way that he directed. 

"I shall do as you wish,” she said, "for I am yours 
henceforth. Commence by ordering me to do some- 
thing to prove my allegiance. Everybody, with the 
exception of M. Deshaltes, wants me to return the 
visit of Miss Vanness. Ought I do so?” 

"Yes,” Gerard replied simply; "unless you prefer 
that I should see her and call her to account for her 
treachery to me, and her attack on your peace by 
ensnaring your husband.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


127 


“No,” she interrupted him quickly; “I would rather 
make the call myself. Being sure that you do not 
care for the girl, I do not object to patronizing her as 
much as they please. But you must promise me that 
you will not go near her, never, never, on any pre- 
text. ” 

It was readily that he gave the pledge. He owed 
Reina nothing since she had struck such a blow to 
his affection as to make the duke her keeper, so that 
Lucien’s only wish in life should be foiled. He would 
not retaliate on her, as a woman, but she would be 
non-existent. If there was still a connection between 
her and Clarkson, in spite of the divorce, he would 
sunder his contract with the mine in which both the 
men were interested and that would end the American 
phase of his career. Catherine thanked him, joyous 
as a child. Dr. Ramonin hardly knew her when he 
came in. She was transfigured. 

"Ha, ha!” he laughed, rubbing his hands with glee, 
and contemplating the pair like a sculptor proud of his 
work. “Love-making is the best reward of all crafts^ — I 
understand that some like it better than mathematics, 
for example. God bless us all, child, you have be- 
come a girl of eighteen again. Now, I must take 
Gerard away, and let you go. We have some excess- 
ively dry studies to get through, on the extraction 
of the precious metals by a novel process. You see, 
if by any chance, if our young genius should marry a 
peer’s relict, he will have to be monstrously rich to 
keep up the style in which she lived.” 

“Madame la Duchess is prepared for ^a lodge in 


128 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


some vast wilderness/” returned Lucien, laughing. “I 
shall write to my friend, Tah-wee-wah-ka-wah, sub- 
chief of the Rickaree Apaches, to keep his cave-house 
in the Cimarron Mountains in good order for my 
arrival with my bride.” 

On seeing their mistress emerge, with the doctor hat- 
less, bowing her to her carriage, the footman and the 
coach driver exchanged a look of pleasurable surprise 
at the brilliant change on her countenance. 

“It’s all right, James, ” said the lackey in a whisper: 
“my lady has had the tooth out that has been worrit- 
ing her for an age!” And having shut the door, he 
slung himself upon the box, crying “Home!” with a 
cheerier tone than he had used for some weeks, so 
contagious is gladness, even when we are not in the 
knowledge of its nature. 

It is needless to say that Mauriceau rejoiced when 
his daughter sent her maid to call him into her rooms, 
where she told him that she was prepared on second 
thoughts to yield to his wishes and her husband's 
commands; she would go to Miss Vanness'. The only 
condition that she imposed was the very proper one, 
that, as her father was an acquaintance of the Amer- 
ican lady's, he should be her escort. 

The duke pretended to be perfectly delighted at this 
submission, but when his father-in-law quitted him 
after repeating the news, he chewed his cigar with a 
bitter scowl and muttered: 

“I do not like this a bit. She had a stiff resolution 
until after a consultation with that meddlesome old 
fossil, Dr. Ramonin, who is the mentor of this under- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


129 


mining engineer, Gerard, and on her return home she 
goes back on her ultimatum. I must be very blind 
not to see that there is foul play under the board. I 
shall keep sharply on the lookout.” 


9 


CHAPTER VII 


A PAGE OF SOUTH-WESTERN ROMANCE 

Miss Vanness occupied, until she should enter the 
famous little house which many a woman of wealth 
and elegance grudged her, a suite in a modern pile of 
flats in the Avenue of the Grande Arm6e, which entailed 
enormous expense from her habit of turning things 
upside down and spurning out of doors what did not 
please her taste, in order that some of her purchases 
should replace them. The rooms, therefore, had the 
aspect of a theatrical storehouse, where rich furniture 
of all periods was mingled together without any effect 
but that of variety. Nevertheless, the boudoir where 
she was installed to receive special company on this 
lowering afternoon, replete with thunder which would 
burst before dark, was rather in the English style, 
and comfort , coziness and chaste luxury had the 
sway. 

Wearing a negligd attire of lace and Indian silk, 
with a hint of the sultana in her ornaments of Oriental 
pearls, Reina was carelessly but gracefully ex- 
tended on a reclining chair, with her long but narrow 
feet, in cloth-of-gold slippers, of Byzantine em- 
broidery, crossed on a footstool of satin^ packed with 
down, in which the shapely heel sank a little. 

130 



**Reina was carelessly but gracefully extended on a reclining 
chair.” — (p. 130. 




f •* 

Ui^ M*/: 


/ 



'. ♦ «. 

* 


• » 


‘ * H 


‘■fc 

h ^’ * -I 

"w ■ - 

. H , «■; 

VA;-.. •■■> „.■#■“ - 


I ‘ r * ♦ 

-. 'Vt':'^ ; ' 

0 K\y .. 



- 

^ 3F I r 



•* • < 


* '•■-•’ < . J * ■ MIMW/ **v"t ■*’--*'*^ 'ii 

ii » ^ • *“ ' ’ ' ■ , ■■'*'» 

* r^l ^ If ■^.^• 

I liA.-jrl'o -, . ., . ^ 



•• 1 j- 


'* - - I 

^ i: ,. 


/ 

« 4 





< « 




I . 


) I 7 



liSw^ 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS I3I 

She had not practiced the pose, for she knew that 
its neatness and temptingness came by that nature 
of the fine-bred American, who has become a tissue 
of nerves on a finished frame. At the same time as 
the dry, thin atmosphere sublimated the flesh, the 
moral air of the great cities, where all things travel 
at the wildering pace of the changes in a phantasma- 
goria, kept her invention on the stretch, sharpened her 
wit till she wounded even those vflio would have been 
friends without intending or perceiving it, and improved 
what qualities are liked in the medium degree so 
that in the superlative they became offensive. Reina’s 
repose was coldnses, her youthful brightness pert pre- 
cocity, her grace too supple, and her voice acute and 
too precipitate in utterance. 

“It is going to be a day of battles,” she mused. 
“Gerard is coming — the Duke of Septmonts, ” — she 
lingered on the title as if the words were sugar-plums 
out of one of the several open boxes of sweetmeats 
scattered at random on the occasional tables — “and 
his duchess. I am confident that I shall bring her 
pride into the dust — an upstart who comes from be- 
hind a dry-goods-store counter, and ought not to have 
lifted her eyes above the floor-walker of her father’s. 
Wait, wait a little till I rule my new house, and I have 
her and Gerard at my table, on which shall shine the 
fifty-thousand-dollar gold service, bought at the sale 
in Florence of the Cardinal-duke de Maffeo-MaffeL 
They will see that I am one of those who do not 
pick up my plate at random, but by the complete set 
at once. And I expect Clarkson will come round from 


132 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


the Hotel-Splendide, where I am informed he arrived 
last night. Poor Clarkson! nobody here can under- 
stand that we were married on horseback by the 
fighting parson of an Arizona mining town of canvas 
and plank huts, and that we were divorced in a 
month. That is too fast a pace for this effete Old 
Country. I don’t believe I did the best for myself 
in discarding him. Bar Gerard, I have not seen a man 
worth holding his hat and cane. The duke — pooh!” 

And flirting out from between her thin but exqui- 
sitely chiseled lip the core of a sugared almond, which 
had struck her as bitter, she hastened to draw a little 
console on ivory wheels over to her side by a silken 
cord, so that she could select another bonbon from a 
fancy coffer upon it. 

It was ro: to the credit of the representatives of the 
exploded world for which she displayed so deep a 
scorn that the first of the expected guests was her fel- 
low-countryman. In three minutes after she was in- 
formed through a speaking tube that Mr. Clarkson was 
at the door ; that irrepressible gentleman had darted 
into her nest of confectionery and flowers, as if ex- 
pelled from a bombard. 

Madison D. Clarkson was a man of thirty or less, 
whose age was not to be measured by years, for he 
had the exuberance of a youth and the spirit which 
knew no ill effect from excesses of any kind. He 
could sit up all night playing cards for enormous sums 
and be out, scouring the plains, on a horse never rid- 
den three days before. His tall form was not bony, as 
he was not of the generation which, with new England 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


133 


parsimony, denied themselves the cream of their dairy; 
and active exercise had given his giant form the per- 
fect grace and the flexibility of the forest warrior. On 
the sumptuous Transatlantic steamship, the “tonsorial 
artist” had trimmed the “Kansas chinners,” or rampant 
imperial, and the flowing mustache which would have 
done honor to an ancient Gaul. He was, while pre- 
serving a grandeur not familiar among the decadents 
of the end of this century, a gentleman of the world, 
and a Parisian dame would have sooner received 
him than those British dukes who walk like grooms 
and talk like hostlers. For that matter, overlooking 
the impetuosity of his rush, in his bow as elaborate as 
a Spaniard’s and in his word of pleasure at seeing his 
divorcee once more, was that air of devotion cultivated 
in the extreme in the land where men, out of busi- 
ness hours, live but for their womankind. Nothing 
was to be said about his dress, for it was of the first 
London tailor’s, and that is the style which reigned 
over the dandies of Paris. 

Having shaken Miss Vanness’ slender, fragile 
hand with animation, but a delicate repression, as if 
he feared it would shiver like porcelain, he sat on the 
nearest chair with ease, and after a roll of the tongue 
— not to shove a quid of tobacco in a recess of his 
mouth, but by what Dr. Ramonin would call heredity 
of the chewing habit in his forefathers — he said in a 
strange voice, now drawling, now clipping the words 
as if he were alternately pressed for time and then 
puzzled how to dispose of unwonted leisure: 

“Well, you see me, right end up and in going con- 


134 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


ditiori,' but I never believed I should sit in a Parisian 
saloon this side of last New Years. ThaPs so,” he 
added, not that she had lifted her penciled eyebrows 
in any doubt but as a kind of regular tail to a speech 
which he frequently repeated. 

“You go ahead right away, and tell me the story,” 
she answered, munching and mouthing, but with the 
daintiness of a well-fed kitten that returns again and 
again to the alluring plate. “Nothing happens worth 
getting out a special extra edition for, in this dull 
hole of a city.” 

“It is the story of your first dividend ©f fifty thou- 
sand dollars,” said Clarkson. '’‘After our parting by 
the courts, I felt the need of some employment. I 
had my doubt of the truth of the report that the vein 
to which we gave your name had petered out ; and I 
made up my mind to investigate on my own behalf.” 

“You may smoke here,” said Reina, suddenly as she 
fancied that her friend would discourse with greater 
ease if he had a Havana to puff in the intervals of the 
incidents of a tale which threatened to take some 
time. 

Indeed, though the terse, curt sentences of the nar- 
rator absorbed less of the lady’s impatient attention 
than in our repetition, they were none too brief. 

Clarkson went on to say that, on reaching the mine 
in question in New Mexico, he discovered that its 
worth had been discredited so as to induce its aban- 
donment. With imperfect implements and that curse 
of the insufficiency of laborers to contend with which 
hinders American enterprsie in the South-west, the 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


135 


adventurous and indefatigable young man unearthed 
ore tx) such an amount and of such richness, that, 
roughly smelted he had bricks of the value of fifty 
thousand dollars ready for transmission to the near- 
est town with a bank. He intended to send this to 
his recently divorced wife as a token that their “little 
unpleasantness” had left no rankling in him. But it 
was not long before he learnt that the wagon had 
been waylaid by Indians and everything carried off, 
not to forget the scalps of the unfortunate conduct- 
ors and guards. 

A half-breed who had nearly incurred the death of 
strangulation common in that latitude, for being in 
possession of some fragments of the plunder, revealed 
the place of the massacre and offered to lead avengers 
to the spot where the trail began. 

Clarkson regarded the attack on the love-offering to 
his ex-consort as a personal outrage. He buckled on his 
belt with cartridges for a brace of navy revolvers and 
a Henry rifle, and went off with the mixed-blood as 
guide in pursuit of the war-party. He might have 
made up a party of two or three companions, who 
would “as soon fight as drink,” and whom this excur- 
sion would have entertained, for the entertainments 
of the boarder are not those of Paris : but he had a fit 
of obstinacy that day. His self-conceit was enlisted; 
he wanted to prove to the lost Reina that, as the 
money was hers, he was as much man to regain it for 
her as to find and dig it. 

In coming to the scene of the affray, he was in doubt 
whether the attack had been made by white ruffians 


136 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


giving the murder the air of an Indian surprise, or 
by the genuine sons of the desert and the mountain. 
The difference was really immaterial: if the former, 
in following the robbers home, he would corner them 
in a bar room of an ephemeral town; while in the other 
case he would tumble into that hornets’ nest, a sav- 
ages’ village. 

Afraid of either contingency, the treacherous guide 
fled one night with both horses and the supply of 
food. He would have taken the weapons which he 
gloated over when they were cleaned and loaded, but 
it is easier to draw a Western man’s eye-teeth with- 
out waking him than steal his gun and carving-knife. 

Then, dismounted, short of food and vainly seeking 
water, the lone wanderer began one of those Odysseys, 
where the hero totters between want and fortitude, 
upheld ablast not by his courage and hope but solely 
by the invisible hand of heaven, which seems to the 
solitary more indubitably near him than in the haunts 
of man. 

Worn to a skeleton, blackened by the sun, Clarkson 
was still erect on the twelfth day of his final stage of 
privation, with a record for subsisting on herbs and 
roots which a vegetarian could not match, when he 
walked into the midst of a group of Apaches who had 
been, with grim mirth, watching his staggering steps. 
He was disarmed in a trice. So shadowy was he that 
even they, sworn enemies of his people for good and 
sufficient reasons, contented themselves with snatching 
his firearms from the wasted hands, and gave him a 
chance to recover life by pouring some melted deer fat 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


137 


down his shrunken throat. Marvel of marvels, he re- 
turned to life without having been injured in a vital 
organ. Frightened by this resuscitation, the party 
sagely concluded that he was destined to be a dread 
enemy, and hurried him oif to the village to be dealt 
with by the chief and the elders. 

Such an act of humanity was very naturally rebuked 
by these wise men, and poor Clarkson would have 
gained nothing by the respite but the intolerable pangs 
with which the body retaliates on the foolish creature 
not preferring death to reparation after starvation. 
He was doomed to be burnt at the stake where he 
would not yet have furnished much light to the Apache 
Country as a human candle. 

To increase the pleasant state of mind which 
this sentence might be warranted to produce, it was 
stated with a wealth of detail which left no doubt of its 
truth, that the gold for which he had ventured so 
much in the first place and so far in the second, was 
indeed captured by these Apaches, who were the great- 
est red warriors in America. They had the ingots 
still in their hands, awaiting the coming, for its trans- 
mutation into whisky, powder and other necessaries of 
savage luxury, one of those gentlemen of the Facing- 
-both-ways’ policy known as Indian traders. 

But before his advent, Clarkson would play the 
part of a Hindoo widow at suttee. He would not even 
have the slender consolation of the almost inevitable 
artist of the Eastern illustrated paper, to represent 
him like a male Joan of Arc, for the delectation of 
Miss Vanness. She had forgotten him, busy as she 


138 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

was in her voyage to Paris, where she had projected 
to mar the love dreams of Catherine Mauriceau and of 
Lucien Gerard. She certainly was not the good angel 
to whose prayers were due not exactly the preserva- 
tion of his life as the loss of that of the chief of the 
Apaches. 

This worthy sickened and passed away, under an 
illness so mysterious that the wailing tribe did not 
hesitate to attribute the same to the mistaken kind- 
ness of the members who had brought Clarkson into 
the village. The medicine-man, or doctor whom M. 
Ramonin probably would not have recognized as a 
brother in his fraternity but who held a great empire 
over his patients, approved of the concentration of 
hatred and sentiment against the white man; but he 
asserted that the appeasement of the offended Wah- 
condah would only be attained if he were immolated 
at the change of the moon. This would take place 
just three days after the funeral of the chief. 

The medicine-man had the politeness to repeat the 
news of this peculiar grace to the prisoner, speaking 
English with an accent not like that of the Rickarees. 
Indeed, on being reproached by the indignant American 
for going against his color, he retorted, to the ap- 
plause of the bystanders, that he was not one of his 
kind of dogs, but a French Canadian, and that he hated 
all of English blood as fiercely as the red skins them- 
selves. It was evident that he was anxious, by the 
sacrifice of the white man to the spirit of the chief 
whom he had failed to protect with his craft, to keep 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


139 


good friends with the tribe to which he was an ad- 
junct, not a corporeal member. 

The surprise of Mr. Clarkson may be imagined when 
at midnight, at which hour an Indian village is quiet 
except for the continuous snarling of the prowling dogs 
over well-picked bones flung out of their masters’ wig- 
wams, a voice said, with the accent of the medicine- 
man: 

“You have only one chance for your life. You can- 
not, any more than I, quit this barbarous hamlet liv- 
ing, but as the dead you may pass the bounds in the 
morning.” 

It is the province of these magicians to speak enig- 
matically, but this one abused his offlce. In the silence 
through stupefaction of the American, th-c other pro- 
ceeded: 

“The chief lies dead in his lodge, the third to the 
right of the single street, and opposite the Lodge of 
the Mysteries where I reside by virtue of my profes- 
sion. Take this knife, steal into that dwelling of the 
dead, whence the squaw watchers and wailers have 
retired, fatigued with their recitals of his exploits 
and all that established rigmarole. Dig a shallow 
hollow, in which inter him, and apparel yourself in his 
finer}^ and trappings. Here also is a stain of butternut 
juice which will give your skin the bronze tinge of 
the Apaches. As for your likeness, it is the closer, 
as I have noticed that the similarity of life on the 
margin of the wilds molds the Anglo-Saxon into a 
fac-simile of the Aborigine.” 

“I think I see your drift,” said Clarkson. “I am to 


140 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


let the funeral procession take me out and dump me 
into a grave; but if they should bury me as their 
chief less shallowly than I shall have the time to bury 
the real one, where is my gain? death for death. I 
would as soon go up like Elijah as go dowm into the 
vault like Lazarus— with no such expectation as his 
folks had for him, of being revived, unless you will 
uncover me.” 

"You have not the whole idea of the programme 
followed on these occasions, at which I do not won- 
der, as your brothers take care to allow few of the 
Apache leaders to be tranquilly buried by their people. 
Substitute yourself for the chief, whom you must 
stow where the dogs will not pry him out, and you 
will rejoice in the family vault of the chiefs of the 
Apache Nation. As for me, while his successor is a 
protector of mine, not a little owing to a supply of 
opiates by which I plunge his opponents into timely 
stupor, I am not going to trust to his cover when the 
hubbub breaks out on the discovery that you have es- 
caped. I shall light out, as your expressive Ameri- 
canism has it, for that sugar-loaf peak in the north, 
with a couple of mustangs. If they do not break my 
neck, and if I succeed as smoothly in reaching that 
rendezvous as you, we will have a merry settlement 
together, for I have the knowledge of where the 
chiefs have hidden your gold and a quantity of other 
valuable plunder.” 

"Good-bye, friend,” whispered Clarkson, for there 
was no doubt that this was a friend in need. 

He obeyed his instructions to the letter. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS I4I 

He reached the home of the dead leader without 
stop, concealed the corpse in the ground and laid 
himself out in his stead; luckily, he was so enrobed 
that little of the live man’s complexion was exposed. 
The funeral cortege to accompany the chief to his last 
resting place, came at an early hour to make the start, 
for it appeared that the sun was to kiss the dead one 
at the time of his rising. To further this feature, the 
body was not placed in the earth but on a kind of 
platform out of the reach of the wolves, adorned at 
the top of each of the four upright poles with the 
trophies of the hero and the tributes of his relatives. 
The slaughter of a dog for his meals on the voyage 
over the range to the west, and of a couple of ponies, 
concluded the ceremony which the object alone found 
too long. The Indians, children of nature in love of 
shows, would have protracted it, but there was some 
stir in the village, left to the cripples, the women and 
the aged. It looked as though the horses had been 
frightened into a stampede, or were running away at 
hazard. If the whole of their attention had not been 
diverted to the chase of their four-footed treasures, 
they must have been prettily horrified to behold their 
beloved chief spring off his mortuary couch, and seiz- 
ing the tomahawk and gun suspended by his wooden 
pillow, race at speed like the fugitive toward the 
woods between the village and the conical mountain 
of which the friend in the wizard dress had spoken. 

Before noon of the following day, they were re- 
united there. 

Clarkson expressed his gratitude to his preserver 


142 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


and wanted him to share the gold which he hoped to 
recover by the help of the soldiers whom he was de- 
termined to lead to the spot. But as his frank rela- 
tion of his name and position was unfolded, the 
Frenchman seemed to be chilled — almost to regret the 
step he had taken at the loss of his post among the 
Apaches, and parted from him three days later at a 
military fort without even naming himself or receiv- 
ing any substantial reward for his piece of strategy. 

“I suppose he is one of those crazy fellows who 
live on the frontier, spared by the reds as a lunatic 
always is, and steering clear of the whites because 
some events in his early life made him hate his kind.” 

“But you recovered the gold?” said Miss Vanness, 
heedless about the fate of the instrument in her ex- 
husband’s salvation. 

“Certainly I got the gold, which I know you safely re- 
ceived. The colonel at the fort was rather slow about 
dispatching a troop to chase back the Apaches who had 
followed us nearly under his guns, so I collected some 
dare-devils and we marched in quest of the pillagers’ 
hoard. We had a fight for it, but we routed them 
out of the village, which we burnt, and we returned 
while the soldiers were putting on their boots, to be 
cheered by the poeple of the town.” 

“You might have been killed, burnt, buried,” said 
Miss Vanness, with her first evidence of emotion. 

“That’s so. But I had written my will, so that you 
would have come into my property just the same as 
though we were still husband and wife — and I do not 
clearly see why that is not a fact.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


143 


"Perhaps it was a misstep," observed she, thought- 
ful for an instant. "I should not have been soon 
consoled if you had been lost. I am very proud and 
very fond of you, Madison!" 

"Why did you not say so before?" he exclaimed 
with sparkling eyes. 

"It was you that led to the parting. You said I 
was a flirt. And you bantered me on my appearance 
in the ‘Mary Walker’ dress — it is true I looked a 
fright — but I did not see that, then — and you were no 
gentleman to make fun of me. Men should always 
keep a store of indulgence ready like a reservoir of 
water in inflammable houses. But it is past praying 
for now. Do not let us deplore. Things are better 
as they stand. We can still see each other with 
pleasure, and we can chat about any subject like a 
couple who are sparking." And she gave him an in- 
gratiating smile. 

"I never see you without a great jump of my heart, " 
he returned. "When I am out West, amid the toil and 
the hustling, I fancy that I have ceased to think about 
my 'wife of a day. But, just as soon as I set eyes on 
you again, I know for a fact, cold-drawn and no kick- 
ing against, that you are as much on my mind as my 
heart. " 

"It will wear off," she replied merrily and looking 
at a toy-watch rather than turn her head to see the 
clock on the bracket under a view of the Rocky Moun- 
tains in winter, a little toward her side. "Make 
yourself at home — I have no use for half this flat; 
order a carpenter in and partition off all the space 


144 AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

you like. It will be nicer than these French hotels 
wFere talk is cheap and you have to provide your own 
soap and towels if you want to wash more than your 
little finger.” 

“It don’t amount to a row of pins where I camp 
down,” said Clarkson, “for I am only laying over at 
Paris for a couple of da3^s.” 

“Oh, I forget that I was expecting a call. Do not 
light up another cigar. They are real tobacco and — ” 

“These foreigners are so unused to it that it would 
knock them over, eh?” 

“It is not that, but the caller is a lady.” 

“All right; you are the one woman who has a right 
to put my pipe out.” And he calmly shut up his 
cigar-case and the patent pocket damp which he had 
produced to renew his smoking. “I am no good at 
the lingo, and if the lady is one who puts on style — ” 

“She is a duchess, that is all.” 

“Oh, my! then I had better be going.” 

“When you like. But you might let me know how 
Vannessa is getting on?” 

“Our city — your city, since I gave it your name for 
luck. It is going ahead like steam. Did you not 
receive the folders about it?” She nodded, but with 
the compassionate smile of one who no longer be- 
lieved in the panegyrics of land-speculators and city- 
projectors. “As you know, I selected a site on a feeder 
of the Colorado, where the three States or Territories 
soon to be admitted into the Union, would have to 
pass their products through our town — when the rail- 
roads are built. I was not going to wait for that, but 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


145 


as soon as the Union Pacific came down in the rates 
to my figure, I contracted to have my houses of plank 
shaped for joining, transported to the spot. Among the 
frames were those for hotel, casino, school, newspaper 
and job-printing office — ” 

“And church — you did not forget the church? 

“I guess not,” said Clarkson, indignantly. “One 
item in my calculations had to be altered, for the 
settlers went so strong for prohibition that the saloon 
had to be transmogrified into a Grange lodge. It is a 
metropolis by this time, with a palatial villa for you, 
when you like to come. We have an opera house, 
and I am looking after two or three big stars, now, to 
inaugurate it. We have the cash to deny ourselves 
nothing that Europeans can afford. That mine is a 
tiptopper — inexhaustible is a poor word for it. It has 
not a peer in New Mexico or Arizona except that 
prodigious one that the Santa Catarina Company are 
floating in London and Paris right now.” 

“The Catarina,” repeated Reina, with lively curiosity. 

“Yes: one that a young French prospector was told 
of by the Indians, the story goes. It says that, he 
lived among them to worm out the secret, and one day 
a chief took him out in the desert to the right place, 
stamped his foot on the old bed of a river, and said 
‘My white brother seeks the yellow metal; there you 
are!’ I am inclined to believe it, as I knew of such 
another case of a white man conjuring among them.” 

“Another Frenchman?” said Miss Vanness, thought- 
fully; “And he names the mine the Catarina — which 
is Catherine.” 

10 


146 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“Those stupid red-skins despise gold,” remarked 
Clarkson, shaking his head in inability to understand 
such density. “That is why the race lessens every 
day, and will disappear altogether before we celebrate 
another Centennial, Wampum has no show against 
the mighty dollar. Men have invented many idols 
since Adam was a little boy, but this one has never 
been dethroned. ^Time is money, ^ that is all very 
well; but I say, Money is everything.” 

“We are of one mind, Clarkson,” said the American 
girl, enthusiastically and with an abruptness prov- 
ing that his spark had fallen into a combustible shell. 
“I no more know what that power will lead me to, 
than you where death will cut your enterprise short. 
I adore its power and I proclaim — I advertise it to all 
the world. It helps me to possess what all desire, 
and weakens my regret about what I cannot clutch. I 
longed for this scepter when I was a child; and since 
I have seized it — not a little thanks to you, Madison 
— I wish to increase it. Make me rich, Madison — 
make me immensely, awfully rich, and one of these 
days perhaps, when I shall be tired of this old-time 
civilization, which appears to me very superficial and 
narrow, perhaps I will consent to going to occupy the 
queen-villa in the city which you have built in my 
honor. Then you can take me into your arms again, 
my dear Madison, and you will find on my cheek no 
kiss but that you placed there when we were wedded. ” 

“Is that so?” ejaculated Clarkson, delighted and 
astounded, as he seized the hand which she extended 
with feeling, and covered it with caresses. 



“ He seized the hand which she extended, and covered it with 
kisses.” — (p. 146.) 


K,. '’. y,> - rr^ - . 



• 










r ‘4 





yi?:: - ;/»? ,' ■■• * 




». • 


4 


r> S 



f • 




« t ^ 





V 


.r^ ‘ - ? 


s ’as 


ki %:^-''v:' 

» - :.^ 

3 ,' y 



* 



e . 


f 


• f 


. 'S 


■••, •‘V i' 



— WfW ’ 

!'■ ^ ■ fri^' " 



IW; 


'»«■ I 


I 




l« 




Si 


i fc' 


■M 


/ I 


.. I 


'**■ 


i*' : 


' • 




f» 


^ - 


»' 





» ..I 


I •• 


* i 



&ry'< 




*• 14 - ;,• 'S' . 

V r 

" m 




>V ^ 




• # 




'* ts"; . »',. 



^ « 







-X 


t I 




t ‘ 




..u 


m M ^ 







K 


f* 


tfet?/'- ‘'S '■ 


'•V 


-I ^ 


,lf 


> •'■ tj* 


^4 



1^- 1 1 '4 4 ^ 




A - 








s# 




\V t 




4 ' %t 




. Jk-ri ? 



l: 


■ C <• - .* 



■ *■ 

" 1 **^ * #4 • 


THE AMERICAN GiRL IN PARIS 


147 - 


*'It is the truth. Ah, I can tell you more: if you 
had been killed out there, by white or red, French, 
English or Spanish, or our own breed, I should have 
flung down my fan here and taken up the rifle there 
to revenge you. ” 

The tapping of a servant’s knuckles at the door in- 
terrupted an interview which may strike Europeans 
as odd, at its affectionate turn; it was to announce 
Doctor Ramonin, at whose name the lady frowned, 
but she gave the order for his being ushered in. 

“Do not be backward,” she called out, as he paused 
on the threshold between the Gobelins hangings, at 
seeing the strange gentleman whose attitude spoke of 
perfect understanding with the hostess. “You drop in 
to a connubial scene, almost. This does not shock a 
medical man?” 

Nothing startled, the philosophical professor and he 
came forward imperturbably, though he knew he was 
a soldier who penetrated a mined fortalice. 

Miss Vanness paused and looked almost anxiously 
toward the doorway, and bit her lip on becoming 
sure that the visitor came alone. 

“Where is M. Gerard, whom I asked you to bring 
along?” she inquired directly. 

“He cannot come,” was the response in a voice 
which was a triumph of self-command, considering 
that the brightening fire in her eyes did not reassure 
him. 

“Cannot come — or would not?” she demanded almost 
fiercely; and in the way of her lifting her head and 
stretching the long, pliant neck he was reminded of 
the serpents. 


148 


the AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“He said he could not. He is busy in finishing the 
accounts and papers on the acceptance of which he 
dissolves an engagement with your Mr. Clarkson.” 

At the utterance of his name, the American, who 
had strolled round the room, idly scanning the pict- 
ures, turned and gave the doctor more attention than 
at the first. 

“This is my Mr. Clarkson," said she, without a 
smile. “Let me make you acquainted. I present to 
you. Doctor, Mr. Madison D. Clarkson. Clarkson, 
this is Professor Ramonin, our greatest chemist, as 
well as the medical practitioner most consulted by 
the fashionables, although he is in a measure retired. 
You would know his name because he is an expert and 
an authority in the new art of reducing ores, of which 
his pupil M. Lucien Gerard is the active exponent.” 

“Ah, sir,” said Clarkson, holding out his hand with 
the hearty admiration of the cities of the New World 
for a light of science. “I had 3^ou down, to be called 
upon. Let me tell 3^ou that the mountains of Arizona 
will yet skip and clap their hands, as the Scripture 
says, because of your discoveries. We have a ‘chair’ 
in the metallurgical branch of the Vannessa College 
of all the arts named in your honor. I say, I have 
some specimens of metal and ores at my hotel, 
and if — ” 

“My call is purely to tender my young friend’s ex- 
cuses,” said the doctor, grasping at this chance of 
leaving the house, “and I will go with you thither, 
in my brougham, which is at the door.” 

Miss Vanness did not detain either. The staying 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


149 


away of Gerard was a rebuff which made her dread 
that the day would not close as pleasantly as Clark- 
son’s arrival had opened it. She listlessly repeated the 
gentlemen’s farewell, and relapsed into a brown study 
before they departed. 

“You do not lose time in preliminaries,” said Ram- 
onin to the American in the lobby, with admiration. 

“No! it is a habit we acquire in my country. But 
tell me, this M. Gerard, whom I shall not be sorry to 
meet — has he been in the States that he' seems to be 
so well versed in the geology of the tracts where few 
white men have trod?" 

“He was there more than two years,” answered 
the doctor, only too glad to expatiate on the prowess 
and lore of his protdgd, on which subject he was 
speaking when, at the door of his carriage, on the 
pavement, he was compelled to interrupt himself to 
exchange greetings with Septmonts, who alighted from 
his horse, and rapidly present Clarkson. Septmonts, 
thanks to his fatherdn-law, had a footing in the world 
of speculative finance, and Ramonin honestly thought 
they might find each other useful. 

“Oh, it is you, duke?” said Miss Vanness, as the 
nobleman came into her room, evidently disturbed in 
temper about some recent event. 

“Yes; is that your Mr. Clarkson whom our much 
too sociable Ramonin insisted on my knowing?” 

“So you have met him? does he not please you?” 

“Well, no, when a man jerks his head to me, with 
his hat glued upon it, it is among the actions that 
do not charm me. I am accustomed to having people 
more polite toward me.” 


150 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“Particularly when they do not know you.” 

“What do you mean by that?” he asked testily. 

The lady was not in good humor at the slight which 
Gerard had inflicted, and she was not sorry to have 
even a Septmonts under her hand to vent her irritation 
upon. Accordingly she directed on him the lightnings 
of her eyes which Ramonin had prudently avoided, 
and she replied more tartly than he had spoken: 

“You are in my house, my dear man, and if the 
style of Uny’ Mr. Clarkson, or of any other Mr. Clark- 
son, does not suit you, you have nothing more to do 
than step out and not come any more.” 

The duke was too angry to utter an apology, but he 
was not going to retire without emitting a threat, 
after the manner of the viper which hisses as it flees 
from a superior force. 

“Have it your own wa}^, ” he said sharply; and with a 
malignant flash of the eye, which did not shrink from 
her own, he added: “but I shall not go far without 
telling the gentleman from the wilderness v/hat I think 
of his manners. His having been for a brief spell a 
husband, does not authorize him to be insolent.” 

“You are not going to say anything of the sort to 
Mr. Clarkson,” she rejoined in a saucy tone, “and you 
will act wisely in refraining. You will never find a 
better occasion of keeping your dueling-pistols in 
their case. I allow you to walk in and out of my 
lodgings and to move around me in my external life 
with so much freedom that some f@iks believe, and 
you may yourself have fallen into the notion, that 
you have won some rights over me and in my house. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS I5I 

But you ought to know that you possess none at all. 
You would injure me in reputation, if it were not per- 
fectly indifferent to me what people think and say. I 
let the world's tongue wag, because it keeps me in 
the public eye, while you benefit by its advertising 
you and it may be of some service. But do not 
imagine you are the diamond, when you are but 
the thin rim of metal that holds it to the band 
and is scarcely seen in its luster. Some of those 
harpies who spy you in my box at the opera, fancy 
that you gave me the diamonds which I wear, per- 
haps, rather too lavishly. I was talking of diamonds. 
Well, you did give me a few, and your father in-law 
gave me a few more; but you do not reckon them as 
presents, do you?” 

The duke quailed under her scorn, as he remembered 
it was thus that he and Mauriceau had recompensed 
the amateur marriage-broker for the maneuver by which 
Catherine had been transferred to the ducal mansion. 

"Very likely, when wine has made you maudlin in 
the company of those women, you whine over my 
cruelty which is driving you to drink. I do not care 
a cent of your currency for your airs and impertinen- 
ces, but do not try on your jealousy and your touchi- 
ness as regards me, with Mr. Clarkson. He does not 
know you, spite of the good doctor’s introduction: he 
does not care to know you and your class; you do 
not exist for such as he is; he only passes through 
Paris on business matters vv^hich are more important 
than a province of France affords; and as for fighting 
duels, pshaw! he risks his life at the point of the 


T52 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

bowie or the muzzle of a repeater against adversaries 
who are quite otherwise formidable than you. He 
will not fight in the modern Parisian manner— but 
shoot you like a rabbit! You have your warning, from 
one who has seen the man at work!” 

Averting her head, sinking into a feline attitude of 
luxurious self-absorption, she mused, perhaps of the 
fairy city of the West over which floated the banner 
with her name, without a second idea that Septmonts 
remained in the boudoir. 


CHAPTER VIII 


A DUEL OF WOMEN 

Part of the irresistible fascination that Riena Van- 
ness exercised over the men of the Duke of Septmonts' 
stamp was her strangeness. If she had only acted 
oppositely to European habits, they could have com- 
prehended her in time; but she followed an erratic 
course which was above their orbits. Never had he 
been so treated by women, but he still thought it 
natural to adore her. 

Often had he asked himself the common problem in 
his set: why does Septmonts, having a young, lovely 
and accomplished wife, make a fool of himself by fawn- 
ing on the hem of Miss Vanness’ dress, when she does 
not throw him even the crumbs of a cake? He could 
not himself solve it, but he yielded without discussing 
to the lure. Why does the loadstone always draw? 
there are irresistible attractions, and in the American 
girl was fixed a magnet for a heart. Although he came 
for but a glimpse, he was impelled to see her daily,. 
More than once he had been rebuffed, as on this 
occasion, but this had not repelled him; and he still 
lingered, gazing on the figure of such disdainful pose. 
It was little worth while to have the dregs of the 
blood of the famous old families of France in his 

153 


154 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


breast, to be snubbed by this daughter of the lineage- 
less American! She had traits which were so remark- 
ble. Not a shade of coquetery was in her. No scan- 
dal about her was traced to a firm foundation. The 
friends of the duke had watched her like private 
detectives on their own account, and never had they 
discovered anything compromising. They joked in 
his circle that she was a boy in the corset and flow- 
ing robe. 

She accepted presents with an open hand which 
astonished men accustomed to the prudery of the 
English and the French; but she took them, however 
costly, with the air of one to whom they were re- 
turned, not bestowed. Any beholder would have 
thought that they had been borrowed from her and 
handed back. At the same time, she was capable of 
doing a good turn to a friend. Septmonts was “in a 
hole,” as she expressed the situation, a bottomless pit, 
where he clung to the brink, aware that if he let go 
his grip he would go down and under forever; she, 
the stranger, had held out her hand and never rested 
till she had placed it in Mile. Mauriceau’s, which was 
his social redemption. She had not bragged of her 
intervention, but the duke was bound to be grateful. 

He still fastened his eyes on her, as you may see 
one of the group of spectators do before the tigress’ 
cage. These believe that they can subdue that dev- 
ilish nature and tame them into being a kitten of a 
larger growth, to sleep on their hearth-rug and come to 
lick their hands at meal-times. Apparently they suc- 
ceed, till the day when the creature bursts all the 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


155 


fragile bonds and, springing on the tamer, devours 
him to the marrow. But in the disquieting charm is 
a fresh charm for the timid master; it makes him 
think himself a hero for being so daring. 

Even this woman of steel and whalebone, with a 
spirit as varied and unsubstantial as the rainbow, must 
have a weak moment; if he were constant, he might be 
present at the right time; he would put ten years in 
the task rather than lose her. 

He sighed so loudly that the lady deigned to glance 
at him and to pretend surprise that he had not 
departed. 

"Come, come," he said, "you are a woman out of 
the ordinary run; one may talk plainly with you. 
Why do you not want me to pick a quarrel with Mr. 
Clarkson, if I am a burden to you?" 

"Because I want you to live," she replied with bit- 
ter sarcasm; "I want you to be a sample of my good 
work in Europe — a memorial of my moral suasion. 
There would be no great inconvenience to me if you 
were killed, but how about your wife? No, you must 
settle down, my dear, and be a good boy at home — 
pattern husband and model papa. That will come in 
time. Talking of the duchess, what is the answer 
regarding her coming? bad, I suppose, since you have 
no.t heralded her." 

"You are wrong. She will come. I ran before her to 
have a few words before her arrival." 

The hostess sat up and brightened perceptibly. 

"Good! but it would have looked better had you 
come together." 


156 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

“She requested her father to be her escort.” 

“This is no longer an interview,” observed Miss 
Vanness, laughing, “but a congress. She must be 
very much afraid of me to come guarded by all her 
family. ” 

“If she only knew how you had received me, I should 
think she would tremble for her reception,” retorted 
Septmonts with a sour face. 

“Nonsense! the worse I treated you, the more 
chances that I should greet her warmly, because one 
of my grievances against you is your neglect of her.” 

•‘That is a pretty saying!” 

“Why do you not cherish the lady?” 

He made a passionate gesture as if to throw him- 
self at her feet, in token of his love for her. 

“If you were so deeply in love with me,” she said, 
“you ought not to have married her.” 

“Why, you know better than anybody how I came 
to do that,” he protested in surprise. “You advised 
me to it; you helped me to it; and you used to say: 
'after you are married to the Mauriceau girl, we shall 
see — 

“You are married to her, and ‘you see what you have 
seen’, to use one of your phrases. My responsibility 
is engaged in this matter, for I aimed at your hap- 
piness without wishing the lady to incur anything of 
the reverse. You seem to forget, your own proverb 
that 'Noblesse Oblige’ — you have ennobled the trades- 
man’s daughter and you ought to treat the duchess 
with attention. Your ancestors, whose boon compan- 
ions of the Regent of Orleans — the Maid of the same 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


157 


section would have been proud of her lord, I ^uess! 
and the Fifteenth Louis, were plaguy vicious; but 
their vices had in their favor elegance, liveliness and 
a kind of probity, when they married beneath them, 
as you have done, to gild their blazons afresh ; at any 
rate, they showed some respect for their plighted word 
— their signature to the marriage contract and the set- 
tlements. They paid their wedding debts as scrupu- 
lously as their gaming ones; they never made their 
consorts the laughing-stock of their domestics when 
they were young, sprightly, and handsome. If they 
were so foolish as to buy a title, at least the women 
had the glory and pleasure of continuing it. Do as 
your forefathers did, my dear Septmonts, and if affec- 
tion does not make you decide for it, let your inter- 
est do so.” 

“My interest?” he repeated with awakened curios- 
ity, for the American spoke with that sharp, clear, 
business-man’s tone which he remembered she used 
when she was talking him into the engagement with 
the Mauriceaus. 

“We are all mortal — the duchess may die, and if that 
happens without leaving any progeny, you will go 
to tarnal smash — I mean complete ruin. For the fort 
une will go right back to Old Man Mauriceau ^the 
father who puts up for 3^ou,’ as 3^ou style him so grate- 
fully. It has never for one moment occurred to him 
to appoint you his heir, or even trustee. Very often, 
the old papa will leave all his riches to grandchildren, 
who would not let their father enjoy any too much of 
them. A word to the men who marry for money! a 
further consideration is — ” 


158 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARig 

“Go on, go on; your sound, commercial way of 
looking at such matters is as valuable as rare,” »aid 
the hearer, not wholly sarcastically. 

“Well, your duchess is a fond woman, and if one 
of these days, she should grow weary of the disdain 
shown toward her by the man from whom she has 
the right of due appreciation, she may look elsewhere 
for consolation. I do not mean toward the nunnery 
as your Ophelias do, I am told.” 

“How can you dare suspect — ” 

“Reserve your airs of the bull-fighter for a voyage 
to Spain, or when you produce Carmen’ at your 
private theater. I do not know but your Othello 
would be more telling than your Escamillo, for you 
are splendid in jealousy — in spite of your extreme 
love for me.” 

He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. 

“Perhaps it is only your pride that was touched. 
I dare say you are not capable of the noble and 
natural jealousy springing from sincere love; but you 
may have in you that baser love which springs from 
jealousy! and I should not be astonished if, some day 
when you hear that your wife has taken a fancy for 
some other fellow, you took a fanc}' for her yourself. 
But take a fool’s advice: do not wait for that time to 
come — make haste, my friend!” 

Septmonts was hushed; the speaker had brought 
before him plainly what he had seen but vaguely 
up to this time. Just as a passenger, on a ship toss- 
ing on the tempestuous sea, pities the voyagers on 
another ship in sight without an idea that the same 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


159 


fate menaces him, so most husbands, fortunately, 
mock at the peril to the domestic peace to which they 
believe only their fellows are exposed. This strange 
moralist was right: if his wife revenged herself for 
his perfidy by betraying him, she would not merely 
stake her fame and life like a single woman who de- 
ceives her sweetheart, but the lives and honor of all 
her race, perhaps during generations. The conse- 
quences of her fault might be disastrous for her dear- 
est ones and the most innocent creatures; the worst 
of it was for a man in his circle, that no one cares 
to be the informer, and judge of an act which might 
lead to terrible catastrophes on the day when revealed 
to the person who ought to know all. But there can 
seldom be palpable and authentic proofs, and what is 
seen and surmised only supplies matter for witticism 
and slander a little better based than usual. 

Suddenly he lifted his heavy head; his mask was 
convulsed and his frivolity was gone; he was about to 
speak with more than customary vehemence when the 
words were frozen on his lips by the tapping of the 
footman’s knuckles on the door-jamb and the an- 
nouncement along the corridor by the servants of 
“The Duchess des Septmonts and M. Mauriceau?” 

The American looked at him with a glory of tri- 
umph about her fine, sardonic mouth, and said in her 
most dulcet tones: “Thank you, dear boy! ’’ 

She rose with a kind of languid alacrity and half- 
crossed the room to welcome the new-comers. Sept- 
monts exchanged a nod with his father-in-law, but 
his wife did not let her glance become entangled with 


i6o 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


him as she was gazing into the eyes of Miss Vanness 
with a guilelessness which she ascribed to the native 
impudence of the Parisian. 

“I have never allowed a member of my sex to cross 
my door-sill,” observed the hostess. “Bitter tongues 
have found for this singularity a quantity of reasons 
to which I am most grateful that you have not given 
more credit than they deserved.” 

The same as if she had not a word and as if dier 
time to speak was not depending on the other^s 
silence but on her choice coinciding with the pause, 
the duchess said in a measured voice: 

“It is quite natural, madame, that I should bring you 
the receipt for the contribution you so kindly offered, 
being the lady-president of the foundation in which 
you interest yourself.” She drew methodically from 
a Russian-leather pocket-book, exubroidered with her 
insignia, a folded slip of blue paper such as legal 
documents are penned upon— atrociously formal, in 
short, as was her tone and bearing. “It is the least 
we could do for a donatrix of such importance.” 

This was the salute before a duel, and the two 
gentlemen looked hardly less disconcerted than Miss 
Vanness must have felt. She frowned a little and 
she chewed her under lip before responding blunt- 
ly: 

“Now that we have exchanged the diplomatic pre- 
liminaries which restricts your ladyship to the reserve 
beseeming her position, and myself to the dignity 
which suits my character, do me the honor to take a 
seat beside me. We have some grave business to 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS l6l 

discuss which may take us a long time, or would 
appear so if you remained standing.” 

The duchess sank with stiff ease upon the chair 
pointed out to her, much as a martyr would by a 
masterly effort sit on the cage containing serpents. 

“Good morning, Mauriceau,” continued the hostess ; 
“I am always delighted to see you, but still more so 
under present circumstances. ” 

“Quite so,” returned the other embarrassed: “there 
was some misunderstanding which had to be cleared 
up.” 

He was not relieved when she whispered to him, in 
an assured voice which anticipated no refusal: “Ask 
me for leave to view my new pictures, and take the 
duke along. I want to chat a while with your charm- 
ing, cordial daughter, and make my peace with her.” 

Mauriceau looked incredulous, but while he knew 
the firmness of his daughter — of recent months at 
least — he also knew something of the speaker’s blan- 
dishment, and he said aloud with a fair affectation of 
the rapture of the art-lover, as he caught his noble 
son-in-law by the arm with a plebeian pinch of 
finger and thumb: 

“My dear madame, as I hear that you have been 
making some purchases from the leading studios, will 
you allow me to show them to the duke? It is a 
severe reflection on poor France that while millions 
are forthcoming for great guns and new powder, she 
has no means to stay the deportation to you, magnetic 
country of our Corots, Robert-Fleurys, and Bouge- 
reaus!” 


// 


i 62 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“Most willingly,” replied Miss Vanness, smiling 
genially. “Practice on the canvases the farewell 
which you would sooner be saying to me.” 

Protesting, the two gentlemen retired, and hardly 
had they passed under the hanging of the portal than 
Mauriceau said: “She could turn a bar of steel around 
her little finger. In ten minutes, my boy, they will 
be the best friends in the world.” 

Septmonts growled some sentence in answer, but it 
was not an affirmative. Since a little time, and with- 
out the American’s suggestions, he had doubted his 
wife’s blind submission to both father and husband. 

On seeing that she was alone with the French- 
woman, Miss Vanness heaved a sigh of relief and said 
with an air of frankness not expected, for the sudden 
change surprised the duchess: 

“Are you agreeable to our speaking with open 
hearts? ” 

“Madame,” was the precisely-turned sentence in 
response of the well-bred woman who wounds to the 
last, “I should not be here were I not at your 
orders. ” 

The flag of truce for a friendly parley was rejected, 
and Miss Vanness was bound to attack. She pre- 
ferred to do it under the guise of self-defense. 

“If I forced my way into your house as I did,” she 
began, “and if I was firm on your paying me this 
visit, it was not for the paltr}^ satisfaction of making 
you do what you did not like, or that of penetrating 
your circle. If I had any desire to be surrounded by 
you. friends, I should have simply to beckon with one 


tHE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


163 


finger to have the whole flock fly hither around me. 
Yes, I have my secretary drawer full of arguments to 
bring that about on the day when the notion becomes 
useful or pleasant to me. I doubt that it will never 
trouble me, and it may be that in a brief spell your 
whirl of fashion will not exist for me. For one who 
has stood on a peak in Montana with hair intermingled 
with the starry locks of Berenice in the skies, one suf- 
focates in your superheated salons. Your friends 
would run up to a sandhill Indian squaw if she came 
here with a fortune amassed in nuggets from the 
tarantulas’ holes. You see no prejudices if they are 
thickly gilded. But I am ready to acknowledge that 
you are superior to your surroundings. I have the 
three most precious gifts desirable in woman — riches, 
youth and independence; they suffice me, and you 
will never hear of me again, after this call is ended, 
unless you wish it. I have not, therefore, laid any 
trap for you, and as you saw, you are here between 
your own folks. For all that, fallow that you ought to 
know with whom you are, and I am going to tell 
you, which confidence is more than anybody else can 
boast of. There are reasons for it which will be 
known to you hereafter. 

“I warrant you have heard all sorts of talk on my 
head. The truth runs thus: 

“You think yourself above me because you are allied 
to a race that has a tree which is rooted in the far-away 
past. That is all right, but your duke is, for antiq- 
uity, a poor mushroom to the live-oak from which I 
spriilg. My grandfather was the last of the Kings of the 


164 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

Indians in the lower part of Florida; he was only de- 
throned by the whole available military power of the 
United States and their best general. He consented to 
exile to the West. He died after some years, not 
one of the promises of the captors being honestly 
fulhlled. His son, chief over a handful, compared 
to the tribe that followed their banner, still held a 
large tract which became valuable as the tide of civ- 
ilization moved westward. What is very rare hap- 
pened: a young and lovely woman, college trained, 
where she had taken high honors, quitted her home 
and friends and went out into the wilderness to mar- 
ry this heathen. She converted him into a Christian, ^ 
and thus began his ruin. He sought to carry out the 
doctrines which he had learnt, and acted upon them 
with the violence of a belated pupil to make up for 
lost time. He turned the other cheek to the striker; . 
he divided his clothes, his food and his fruit with his 
neighbor — ay, with the stranger at his gate. With 
what result : those he benefited regarded him as an 
idiot, and his people considered him a stage worse. 
But his wife applauded him, and while tha-t comforted 
him, I was born. He was so happy as a father that 
he thought my coming the tangible proof that the 
heaven which he had found was favoring him. 

“I was six or eight years of age, one of the pretti- 
est of girls of mixed blood, though gradually losing 
the red-strain characteristics, as not infrequently hap- 
pens, when we had a great man come to stay a space in 
our tract. Trumbull Rasin ^vas the son of a senator, 
and it was understood that he was studying tlfe In- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 165 

dians in order to qualify himself for one of the finest 
posts in the gift of the administration — an Indian 
agency of a superior order. I know little about this 
whisper. He was a winning man, who soon enchanted 
me, as he had already done my parents. He was a 
distinguished orator; never have I heard a voice so 
melodious. Such must the serpent have had that 
tempted our mother Eve. 

“For policy’s sake, my father was bound to make 
friends of the important visitor, for his kindness had 
resulted in his bestowing gifts on sycophants, signing 
papers and I know not what, which obligations were 
soon twisted into a cord to strangle him in the courts. 
He had renounced his race when I was born and was 
now neither an Indian, nor a citizen, since that boon 
was denied him. When he was most harassed he 
was informed that his wife had eloped with the traitor, 
supposed his bosom-friend, who had promised to plead 
for him in the court, and to move the powers in 
Washington. It was a time to test the truth of the 
vows my father had taken at the altar of the pale face. 
Well, madame, he came through the ordeal splendid- 
ly. Some swift and martial spirits, faithful in their 
allegiance to him, spite of all, pursued the culprits 
and brought them back tied hand-and-foot, tWo help- 
less, human logs. They rolled them contemptuously 
out of the blinkets in which each had been envel- 
oped on the horses, and left them on the floor of the 
house, furnished in the civilized fashion, where we 
dwelt. I had been brought up in such semi-savage 
ethics that, precocious enough to understand some- 


l66 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

thing of the crisis, I confidently foresaw that with the 
knife which my father slowly drew, but raised his 
hand swiftly to use, he would punish the guilty pair 
with two strokes like lightning. It was not so. He 
cut their bonds, not their throats. He said with tears 
in his voice: ‘I forgive you both. Untrustworthy 
brother, take your life and redeem it by being fair 
and square to the people of whom I am one of the 
meanest now, thanks to the cupidity of your kind. 
Woman, your child was pining for you. Go to her, 
and leave her no more.’ As if both were as the dead 
to him from that moment, he set to making prepara- 
tions for a journey. It was plain to my young eyes 
that he was abandoning the blasted home to the false 
wife and my innocent self, and that his farewell was 
forever. 

“Rasin had not dreamed of such a noble termina- 
tion to the drama scandalously devised by him. Con- 
founded, he crept out, debased, ashamed, but not so 
much at the lesson as that a despised red man had 
read it to him. Up to this time, my mother had 
borne all the contumely which her marriage beneath 
her had inflicted, without resentment. Now, pride of 
race awoke within her, and she stormed and raved as 
if she were the injured party. I thought her tirade 
grand because it was so noisy, and that she had the 
best of the battle because, without arguing with her, 
without chastising her even with his tongue, my father 
sought to go. Perhaps she feared that his resigna- 
tion was feigned and that he meant to chase her par- 
amour and deal vengeance the more terrible because 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


167 


the wretched fugitive would imagine he was pardoned 
and safe. At any rate, he was checked by a change 
in her voice and manner, which he attributed to a sud- 
den revulsion arising from her perceiving me, amazed 
and mute witness of this monstrous scene between 
parents, for a child tq hear. She fell on her knees to 
me, embraced me, and amid tears and sobs, begged 
for forgiveness. He remained, and I was soon after 
put to bed. I slept in a little extension to the main 
house, in a pretty arbor-like room over the exterior 
of which the flowers climbed. I did not sleep for a 
long time, not only from my young wits being puzzled 
by the affair, much of it being beyond my comprehen- 
sion, but by the perplexing sound of my father and 
mother talking near me, in that subdued voice which 
so exasperates one compelled to listen. 

"At last, when I. was closing my eyes with despair 
about understanding the enigma, I heard a horrid, 
blood-curdling and yet startling cry. After a pause, 
during which I heard hurried footsteps departing, I 
was called in a weak vioce. It was my father’s. 
When I went into the room, overcoming my awe, I 
found him on the floor, just extricating from his breast, 
the knife with which his wife had stabbed him — the 
knife which he had used to set her gallant free. He had 
barely time to embrace me, and to whisper ‘Bear in 
mind eternally the name of Trumbull Rasin as that of 
the man who robbed me of a wife and you of a mother 
and a father. If you live, avenge me. For just 
vengeance, all methods are good. By all that is Sem- 
inole blood in your veins, remember — revenge!’ At 


l68 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

the last gasp, you will notice that the race triumphed 
over the teaching of the conqueror-race. 

“Next morning, I was made heiress to his wasted 
possessions, his law-suits and the legacy of murder. 
Being a half-breed, I was, if possible treated more 
foully than my father had been. Little by little, the 
agents of the tribunals despoiled me. The tribe re- 
pudiated me, through the counsels of avarice. I was 
poor. At the darkest hour of my desperation, my only 
friend appeared. May you never know such despair, 
my lady, or, knowing it, meet with a real friend to 
succor you at the emergency. A white man, a gold 
prospector, passing through the town as I staggered 
irom the court-house where the last of my appeals 
had been cast out, chanced to receive me literally in 
his arms. His name was Clarkson. He heard my 
story and offered his purse to fight my battles over 
again, his hand, his name. I should have taken 
gladly the silver from Judas. How much the quicker 
the gift of this honorable man. He was worth tv/enty 
thousand dollar-s, then. I was eighteen years old, and 
my wealth was in my beauty. My patrimony con- 
sisted in the vow of vengeance; and do you know, 
that thought engrossed me; soon as I thus had means 
to carry it out, I thought of nothing else beside. 
Divorce was readily procurable in that territory, 
especial!}?’ when I paraded my Indian blood, which I 
claimed to be a secret for Clarkson. He was so dum- 
founded by my demand for a separation that he 
offered no dejense; he aided me to take my alimony; 
and did not lift a hand to stay me. I carried, first. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS l6g 

his disesteem, next, five thousand dollars, a new out- 
fit of dresses, fine jewels, all that a woman needed 
for a campaign against man. I went to Washington. 
The senator had not been re-elected, but he liked the 
Capital, and lived luxuriously there. His son had 
a fine plantation in Maryland. My mother was dead; 
a child of hers, a boy, dwelt with the father, who was 
proud of it. He cherished him as the apple of his 
eye, but this half-brother of mine was adventurous. 
He used to escape the parental supervision and go 
out on the river and bay, with a negro who also loved 
him. This negro was impaired in brain; he had been 
educated for the ministry, but study had tasked him 
too hard. He thought I was an octoroon of his blood, 
and conceived a singular devotion for me. I talked 
Scriptural interpretations to him by the hour, in a 
word addled him and brought him to that stage of 
the religious fanatic when such are capable of any 
deed. I instigated him to carrying out the sacrifice 
of Abraham and Isaac. That is, for the good of the 
boy’s soul, he was to send him to heaven while unsin- 
ning. Two days after, the bodies of this black and 
the boy were found in the water; no one but I knew 
that it was not a simple accident. This all but broke 
the father’s heart. From a genial spirit, he became 
solitary, morose, quarrelsome if disturbed in his 
mourning. His father, who shared his grief, received 
his blame because he had recommended the old negro 
as being his body-servant during the War; they 
were both Jiot-tempered and their words ran high. 
The old man, rnad at the hope of his line becoming 


170 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


a hermit — thing unknown in our country where all 
apply themselves to labor — replunged into that in- 
closed sea of financial politics in which he had been 
famous, and enrichdd himself, and tried to multiply 
a fortune aleady vast. There is a period in the age 
of a man when he is the prey of quackery, and nov- 
elty charms those who have been hardened to all the 
stereotyped experiments. I set up as a lady broker, 
a lobbyist, to use our expression, and soon became the 
adviser of this veteran intriguer. I won upon him 
first by my intimate knowledge of how money could 
be made by land speculations in the Indian Territory 
by cajoling the red men. I had learnt this from see- 
ing too late how my father and I were defrauded. 
The veteran began to turn his money briskly and 
put more and more faith in me and money in any 
scheme I proposed. At length, I had him solidly 
emmeshed, so that his friends were alarmed and drew 
his son out of his seclusion to remonstrate. The two 
had a quarrel which would have resulted in bloodshed 
if I had not interfered. This occurred in a hotel, 
so publicly that it was town-talk. In an interview, I 
related, as if innocently, damaging particulars of the 
wrongs by which Rasin had piled up his later gains. 
One of those cold waves of morality rolled over the 
Eastern States, and the ex-senator’s associates fell 
from him. Deprived of support, he was wrecked in 
three days. This time, his son, reduced to misery, 
censured him. I myself know not how the tragedy 
was carried out, but the old gentleman was found in 
the road, lifeless, drawn from his carriage by a rob- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS I7I 

ber who had frightened away his servants. These 
roused the community. Men mounted in haste, the 
dogs were laid on the fugitive’s track and before he 
had time to remove the disguising handkerchief from 
his face, they caught him, tried him before Judge 
Lynch, and Hey! Mr. Trumbull Rasin was hanged to 
the pliant bough of a giant birch! I had triumphed. 
Irony of fate! on examination of their papers, it was 
found that the father had left everything to his' son 
and the latter, alone in the world, thinking of his 
past, had bestowed all on the child of the chief whom 
he had wronged, and of the woman whom he had 
married without the union holding good. Reina Van- 
ness, as I called myself, was now rich, for I who had 
entangled the old senator in quicksands, knew how to 
draw out the money-bags. 

“ Tt never rains but it pours;’ the saying is musty, 
hut it has the modicum of truth of the old sayings. 
I received word from my transient husband, as I 
styled him, Mr. Clarkson, to the effect that he had 
his streak of fortune in the South-west; he had un- 
earthed a gold mine of stupendous richness, and he 
made me a shareholder in it as he did in all his en- 
terprises. It is the custom of these brave, hpnest, 
simple fellows to reserve a stake for their families, 
their sweethearts or their wives. I was touched by 
this unvarying devotion, and for fear of showing weak- 
ness of which I should be ashamed, I abruptly left my 
country for that tour of Europe which, in the case of 
a young, fair and colossally rich American girl, much 
resembles a ^royal progress.’ Yes, I have paralyzed all 


172 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


your capitals with amazement. Capitals are so easily 
paralyzed!” she interrupted herself to say, with a 
laugh. “I was regarded as the type of a class, the 
foremost of that army of invasion which matrimoni' 
ally captures the choicest of your leaders in the heart 
of your camps, though guarded by ambitious tuft- 
hunters, designing mammas, jealous adventuresses, 
and sharp-witted dowagers. We capture your princes, 
and dukes on the steps of the throne — nay, the throne 
is not safe! that of Portugal, that of Bavaria — I 
enumerate no more — but you know that the American 
Girl is the sovereign. I was the most successful of 
all, because I defied the influences which subdue my 
sisters and transform them in a time into French, 
Germans, or English. I remained true to myself; I 
made no friends, no allies, no marriage — for myself,” 
she added with one of those personal allusions which, 
emitted at unexpected intervals, enchained her audi- 
tress during the long and repulsive narrative; but it 
had the charm to the duchess of the confession of 
guilt which, for its horror, induces a criminal advo- 
cate to undertake the defense of a notable culprit. 

“I was an alien to all your rules and regulations, 
your traditions and conventions; to many of your 
trimmed and warped enjoyments; but also to your 
genteel servitude. My whim was my guide. In my 
heart, mind and soul was an overflowing hatred of that 
being, called man — in which feeling I am the repre- 
sentative of the new sect — I behold in him a moral 
tiger, who fawns on woman merely to sully and to 
tear to pieces when he is glutted with her blood. He 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


173 


shall not feast his pride and his pleasure upon my 
father’s child. I thoroughly hate this king of creation, 
who proclaims himself the master of us women. I 
have calculated what his vices may earn for me, with- 
out my returning him anything in exchange. There 
breathes not the man on earth or beneath it, who can 
boast that he has obtained from me the least favor, 
as it is called in the prudish and complaisant lan- 
guage of your drawing-rooms. One of them, wittier 
than the most, styled me the Madonna of Evil. 
When I have extracted from these dupes all that they 
can yield, I pack them off to what they so well de- 
serve: the jail, madhouse, and dishonorable death 
by murder or suicide. When other women shall 
have the consciousness of their power like me, man 
will become but a puny mortal.” 

It was evident from the shrinking away of the 
duchess that the preacher of feminine supremacy 
would find no proselyte in her. Mastering her indig- 
nation and loathing, she said with fine sarcasm: 

“No doubt it was in the name of this peculiar 
philosophy that you obliged mankind, by marr3dng?” 

“Yes,” returned Miss Vanness, without wincing. 
‘Tn my apartments met the ambition of the retired 
dry-goods dealer, Mauriceau, and the ruin of the Duke 
des Septmonts: the happy negotiation which the!y 
intrusted to me was worth a couple of hundred thou- 
sand dollars — say, a million of your francs. This is 
omitting to mention a sum that the duke was in- 
debted to me previously; I am l)ound to add that he 
had offered to settle it by marrying me. But to one 


174 ™E AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

who might have been led to the altar by a Russian 
grand-duke, like a lady of my country, or a monarch 
of the Low Countries, like still another, to say 
nothing of a Roman prince or two, and the last of the 
Orgias, this French peer who was called merel}^ 
‘Monsieur’ and no longer ‘my lord,’ was a descent 
to the ridiculous. I rate my money and my freedom 
pretty high. So I informed the noble that I had al- 
ready a husband — which was true enough, since poor 
Clarkson vows that he is staying single in order at 
any time to annul the separation and repeat our folly. 
Besides, we are still partners in a business sense.” 

The duchess was too well trained to show her 
weariness; on the contrary,- she remarked that the 
story was very curious, but she seemed to long to 
know what was the drift of it all as regarded herself. 
She was promptly gratified, for, with a spiteful 
sparkle in the half-closed, insolent eyes. Miss Van- 
ness resumed: 

“At the end of this avowal which shows you my 
manner of fighting men and things, there is a detail 
concerning us two alone. Among all the men, false 
and odious, by whom I have been served, whom I 
have mocked at and on whom I have been revenged, 
I met one who was really great in mind and heart. 
I have no need to tell you that it is the one whom you 
love!” for the duchess had started as if a red-hot 
iron had been clapped to her temple, “and who,” she 
added reluctantly, as though the syllables were drawn 
from her with agonizing but irresistible pincers, 
"who loves you. He is the only one who has not ac- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


175 


knowledged my empire, and I felt at the start that I 
might fall under his own; but I was not going to sur- 
render quickjy. I met him so dramatically in the 
States that, being a little superstitious, thanks to my 
Indian origin, I saw in it a decree of fate — a ^pointer' 
for my affection. When, the other afternoon, I learnt 
that M. Gerard was at your house, I felt a novel sen- 
sation — that of jealousy, and I wanted to see how 
you bore yourselves when together. That is the 
reason why I forced myself into your presence; and 
my enforcing your return visit here, is purely that we 
may confer at ease. I have never done any woman 
harm, from memory of my mother; some of us must 
be very weak to act as she did. More or less, we all 
have grounds of complaint, and I exclude my sisters 
from my receptions because I do not want to be mixed 
up with disputants whose cause I might have to 
champion. I wish to warn you fairly, and not to de- 
clare war upon you unless you constrain me to it.” 

She paused to view the effect of her challenge, but 
the Frenchwoman held up her head like one set on 
the torso of a statue. It was more offensive than a 
statue’s, as it wore a faint smile of arrogant scorn. 
One may not be an aristocrat in France and yet the 
fellow-countrywoman of Joan of Arc, Jeanne de 
Montfort, and minor heroines, might be proud of her 
land. 

"Is it really love for M. Gerard that I fear? I 
cannot tell, for I have never felt the tender passion. 
Is it another of my caprices — a fad that will hardly 
last a few more days? this is possible, too. I am 


176 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


certain of this — that a novel curiosity pricks me, and 
that I wish to study thoroughly this passion which I 
have many times enkindled, for the sake of which 1 
have seen so much infamy perpetrated, and for 
which I hear, many a heroic deed has been achieved!” 
she said disparagingly. ‘‘This man shall be mine, or 
none else shall have him, for a death will erase one 
of our names from the list of the living — it may be 
yours, it may be his, it may be mine. I do not fear 
death any more than any other eventualities. It is a 
friend or a foe, according to circumstances and the 
way one looks at it. But it is an instrument, like 
another. My advice is for you to take a journey with 
your husband, say, to see the midnight sun in the 
north, and never more see M. Gerard. ” 

The duchess had risen mechanically as though her 
time had come to go away, and she did not deign to 
answer. 

‘‘i\re you disposed to follow my advice?” inquired 
the American. 

‘‘No,” was the curt response in a perfectly unruffled 
voice. 

‘‘You are not going to favor me with any explana- 
tion? ” 

‘‘Not a word.” 

‘‘You are taking this in a high key,” said Miss 
Vanness, a little surprised at this alliance of gentle- 
ness and firmness. 

‘‘I used that which befits my station.” 

‘‘Very well,” returned the other in a lower tone, 
but one which contained no promise of relenting. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


177 


Half-way to the portal the duchess stopped and 
turned, and the other' might for a moment believe 
that she had repented and was frightened into at least 
learning the consequences of her defiance. But no, it 
was only to ask, in the drawl of fashion and with that 
softened accent grassouilte?nent^ peculiar to the Fau- 
bourg St. Denis to which Catherine Mauriceau belonged 
by birth : 

“Would you have the goodness to tell me, madame, 
whether I am to go and join my father — “ she said 
father and not husband — “or am I to wait him here 
to take leave of you?” 

Miss Vanness dallied with the reply, while giving 
even more attention than heretofore to this woman 
whom perhaps she had undervalued. Somehow she had 
a misgiving that she would be vanquished in the con- 
flict, since old philosophy says that the good must 
always be victors. It is true that the temporary gains 
of evil look black for the antagonist, but if the 
observer continues to gaze he will see when the smoke 
of battle fades away, that the true colors float on the 
conquered battlements. 

“But, at least, if I fall, I shall go down dike a 
desperate soldier,” muttered the American. 

The embarrassing situation was ended by the arrival 
of Mauriceau, the duke having lingered in the gal- 
lery in order to stanch another few minutes conversa- 
tion with the beauty, even though his conduct this 
day was decidedly ungentlemanly, not to say deroga- 
tory to a noble. The gentleman looked at his daughter 
and at the other with uneasy scrutiny, and he per- 
iz 


178 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


ceived that there had been a contest, however strictly 
conducted under the regulations of courtesy. 

“Will you see me to the carriage, father?” said the 
duchess, calmly. “Adieu, madame, ” she proceeded, 
again taking up the stately march to the doorwa}^ 
which gave her father the chance to address the 
American unseen. 

“Honestly, how do you like her?” whispered he 
unsuspectingly. 

“De — light — ful!” was the reply, in the exaggerated 
enthusiasm of the day. 

“I thought so,” he said, following his daughter out, 
chuckling. 

When Miss Vanness was quite alone, she gave way 
to a liberation of the nerves in an action which would 
have singularly edified those who thought her perfect 
in self-control; she took down from a trophy of Ori- 
ental arms, a Japanese sword, fine and pliant as a 
blade of grass, and cut into strips with a series of 
rapid, drawing blows, a magnificent, embroidered has- 
sock. When at last she had carved it as Saladin 
did the silken scarf, and sent the last goldq;i thread 
of a sundered tassel flying to the other end of the 
room, she looked up, panting, and saw that some of 
this extraordinary exercise had been witnessed by the 
Duke of Septmonts. She had forgotten that he had 
not returned from viewing the pictures with his 
father-in-law. She leant on the sword in an attitude 
not unlike that often given by the Old Master to 
Judith, and burst into a fit of laughter too strident to 
be sincere. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


179 


"You are astounded, my dear fellow? not at all! 
it is the newest feature in the esthetic gymnastics 
for weak woman to develop the muscles of the arm, 
and you know that 1 am a little of a physician, one 
who has liberally interpreted, ^know thyself!’" 

"Pray let me put up the sword," he said, "for the 
keenness of these blades from the Mikado’s realm al- 
ways inspires a grim apprehension; ' and he hastened 
to restore the instrument to its place on the wall. 
"These upholsterers are fools to use real weapons when 
theatrical ones would answer every purpose — ” 

"Not every purpose,” retorted Reina, throwing her- 
self on a divan like a bayadere after a dance and as 
suddenly sitting up with her clasped hands holding 
her bent knee. 

"So my duchess has gone?" he asked, with a wander- 
ing eye as though he would not be too much horrified 
if he caught sight of her headless trunk under the jar- 
diniers, after this exhibition of the trenchant steel. 

"Yes, so long ago that you will not overtake her. 
I do not believe she waited for you. Say," she 
droned with an amusing mimicry of the urchin of her 
native streets, "let me put a question: do you know 
anybody of the name of Gerard — Lucien Gerard? ’ 

There was little need of his affirmation as his emo- 
tion was answer sufficient. 

"Of course, though — you saw him at your house, 
in your wife’s private apartments when I looked in.” 

"Yes," he observed moodily; "why do you ask 
this?" 

“In order to learn; not that it is the best way with 


i8o 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


one whose words most often disguise his thoughts, 
to speak with the old diplomatists of your aristoc- 
racy, whose memoirs are somewhere on the table at 
your elbow.” 

“The gentleman has been in Paris a year — he was 
in America — do you know him?” 

“Met him in both little spots — yes. I know him 
perfectly. ” 

“He is an old acquaintance of my wife and her fath- 
er; a neighbor’s son where the old gentleman kept 
shop — if you want it put bluntly.” 

It always cost the duke a pang to be stretched 
on that bed of torture, the counter where Mauriceau 
had measured lace and dress pieces, but he pre- 
ferred to do so himself to letting Reina do it. 

“Did they tell you that he is the son of her gov- 
ernness, that they often saw one another with that 
shocking promiscuity of the vulgar, and that they 
used to be considered beau and belle — sweethearts — 
lovers — betrothed? ” 

“No,” said the duke, as if stunned by this repeti- 
tion of epithets. “Who told you?” 

“I heard it from his own lips. The inference that I 
find in this bucket drawn from the well of the past — 
often a deep one not always pellucid — is that, instead of 
playing the poacher in the manors of others, you 
had better be your own keeper at home. Still, un- 
less the young Lothair has imbibed the precipitancy 
of the Americans among whom he has been sojourn- 
ing, you need not leave me so abruptly. I gave out 
that we should see you to dinner. I have invited 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


l8l 


tne Baron Von Kertch, the Cavalier de Sivona, the 
Count von Barnsturm, the Prince de Sant Orso, and 
I should not wonder if Clarkson drops in for the ice- 
cream — ” 

“Certainly,” said Septmonts, chafing at the curb, 
but hesitating to leave the enchantress, even after 
her terrible warning that his place was within his 
own doors. 


CHAPTER IX 


HIS SOUL, HIS THOUGHT, HIS LIFE 

Guy Deshaltes had resigned himself perforce to 
the only noble step before him; he could not boast 
that he had sacrificed the sentiment that Catherine 
inspired, because there could be no sacrifice but 
where might be reality, or at least hope. Where 
is the man to claim a right to vaunt of sacrifice 
when he not only is not loved but knows that his 
beloved loves another. All his heroism was thus 
bounded, and his sole resource, having some gene- 
rosity in his soul, was to prove the sincerity of the 
feeling in his bosom by suppressing any farther ex- 
pression of his passion, and even by devoting himself 
to the success of his rival. Knowing of the meeting 
impending between the duchess and Reina, 'he had 
fears and, had he not received a note asking him to 
call on the former, he would have paid the visit to 
set his mind at rest. 

The duchess was glad to see him. She had not 
been weeping, but it was not possible to disguise traces 
of wrestling with the spirit. 

Poor woman! she was alone, and M. Deshaltes was 
her only confidant, being preferable as adviser to Dr. 
Ramonin, whose age and gravity somewhat repelled 
the troubled wife. 


183 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


183 


“I hastened on receipt of your note,” he explained. 

"Yes,” she answered, warmly shaking hands. “I 
have been unfair to you, for M. Ramonin has told me 
v/hat you have done. There are times when it is so 
sweet to feel that one has friends, and this is that 
time.” 

"Do not be grateful to me,” he protested. "In the 
first place, I have only done what an intelligent 
friend ought to do, and a geat deal more for my sake 
than for yours. You love a man who, has never loved 
another. I long to be the friend of this man as well 
as your own.” 

This was the more easy as she was expecting Gerard 
now; she had written to him at the same time as to 
Deshaltes, and she showed astonishment that he should 
not have been the first to arrive. 

The duchess had written to the lover of her early 
days! How imprudent, for Deshaltes knew that Sept- 
raonts was spiteful as a monkey. 

"Do not compromise yourself,” pleaded Guy earn- 
estly. "Do not allow your name to flutter from lip 
to lip escorted by another one than ^our husband^ s — 
remember that he is a proud man who would never 
pardon a slight.” 

"I have no need to be cautious-- 1 have nothing to 
conceal,” she answered haughtily, but her heart failed 
her a little. "I am loved as I longed to be and deserve, 
M. Deshaltes.” 

I He was repeating his wise counsel when the footman 
mnnounced the subject of their argument. At the 
^name, Guy had a cloud pass before his eyes, and 


184 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

vertigo seized his tormented brain which had not 
lately had needed repose since the discovery that his 
hopes were vain. He recovered himself, as Gerard 
entered the parlor, and presented a serene front, but 
it was a serious one, and it would be difficult for his 
companions to recognize the halcyon of sunnier days. 
Gerard, too, was moody, and, being clothed in 
black after a precedent as much American as Paris- 
ian, he seemed to have come from a funeral. The 
two gentlemen shook hands, when presented, with a 
steady grasp^. 

“M. Deshaltes is a sure friend to whom the hand 
may be held out in entire confidence,” said the 
lady. 

Guy had taken a long, searching look at the other 
while he, for his part, had no eyes but for the duch- 
ess; he did not know more o-f him than the biased 
introducer had said, but he saw enough to make cer- 
tain that this man with the resolute features, bronzed 
by the ardent sun of of New Mexico, and an eye that 
could stare the eagles into dropping, was worthy of 
esteem and brotherhood. He said something to this 
effect, and Gerard, with the frankness and prompt- 
ness of one accustomed to act in emergencies, ac- 
cepted the comradeship and vowed that it was returned 
as unreservedly. This compact made, Guy did not 
delay, for the two had already forgotten him, and as 
the lady had not informed him of the outcome of her 
interview with the American, he left unsatisfied, but 
having that question in reserve for another call. 

"How is it that you didn’t come sooner?” she asked 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 185 

impatiently and not without disquiet, as soon as she 
was alone with Gerard. 

"I was not very sure about coming at all — I have 
such a fear of injuring you socially. What a society— 
you all seem sharks or wolves, lying in wait to see a 
weak point at which to fly, for the sheer pleasure of 
tearing the character to pieces.” 

“But my note urged you to come,” she protested 
with carelessness as to consequences. 

“What note?” he demanded with unqualified sur- 
prise. 

“That I wrote to you yesterday,” was her reply in 
almost as great a degree of the same emotion; “you 
should have received it at the same hour as one to 
M. Deshaltes — they were written together, say at 
nine in the morning.” 

He continued to deny that he had received any com- 
munication, and she rang up a servant who ac- 
knowledged that he had taken his mistress’ pack of 
letters from her tiring-woman and left them all in the 
porter’s lodge; in the division of duties in such a 
large establishment, this worthy would put the lot in 
the post, along with the duke’s correspondence. 
There was no accounting for one of the parcels going 
astray, but he would go and inquire of the porter. 

“What did you say to me in this letter?” asked 
Gerard with rising apprehension. 

“I begged you to call that 1 might relate my con- 
versation with Miss Vanness. ” 

“If that was all — ” 

“But that was not all, though the lady was reluc- 


1 86 ' THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

tant to confess how imprudent she had been. The 
inevitable postscript which, in a woman’s screed be- 
lies or reverses all that went before, was present. 
She had been unable to withhold her pen from assur- 
ing him of her affection, and she hardly dared repeat, 
and but imperfectly recalled the sentences damnatory 
from a married woman. 

“How rash! if those lines have gone into the wrong 
hands and been read?” he said, shuddering. 

“Well,” she returned with an audacity which she 
did not feel, but she was averse to showing that she 
participated in his alarm, “In that case, someone 
will know that we are in love. As I am ready to ad- 
vertise it to the whole world, this discovery by an 
individual is a matter of indifference to me,” said 
the duchess with infinite loftiness. 

“But if this one were your husband?” said Gerard, 
shaking his head. 

“He will not know it too soon. As he must learn it, 
it had better be immediately, and through me than 
a stranger.” 

“But this will lead to a rupture.” 

“What matter? he cannot part us, that I defy him 
to do. When a woman really loves, is there anything 
in the world that can separate her from the man she 
loves? her sister, who is not ready to sacrifice every- 
thing for her love, may have reason on her side, but 
love is not there.” 

All was true; she was true to the girlish plight; 
Gerard’s dreams when he sank to sleep, wrapped in 
the seraph and lulled by the wail of the co3^ote, which 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 187 

could not approach him in the chapparal of Spanish 
bayonet and prickly pear — they were coming — realizing 
themselves. She had no thought but for him. By the 
exaltation of her countenance it was beyond doubt 
that she would follow him out of the world if the 
avenging husband’s pistol cut his thread of life. 

The domestic returned to report, as might be ex- 
pected, from the fraternization of his tribe, that the 
household was immaculate: the porter had as usual 
put all the budget in the postoffice. 

“Perhaps there is a delay in the delivery,” observed 
Gerard, without believing a word of what he said, so 
strong had his dread grown that disaster was impend- 
ing if only because his joy was extreme, for in uncbm* 
mon organizations one great emotion is followed by 
another of a contrary kind. 

“No,” she said gravely, for his fear was contagious. 
“Something else has occurred. Never mind! As you 
told me to go and see Miss Vanness, I have done so. 
She let me know that she loves you, but though she 
is a divorced woman and can, I suppose, wed again, 
I do not fear her— any longer, at least, if ever I did.” 
Gerard, who had started with surprise, was calm and 
smiled slightly. “You may have associated sufficiently 
with savages to understand her ideas about plunder- 
ing, cheating and murdering white people, but I 
doubt that you will applaud her. A Parisian is not 
made to be coupled with a red Indian girl, even if 
the chain be golden. Hence, when, after a long and 
fiery outburst of hate and a story like a chapter from 
Gustave Aimard,she talked of power to reap vengeance, 


i88 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


I mocked at her order, as it was, to take myself off 
with duke and keep him from pestering her any 
more; and simply answering. No! I came away with 
my father. I wanted to draw a free breath. 1 was 
in haste to be afar from a creature who is not of our 
age, our world, our race, or my sex — she an American? 
not wholly, and what portion she derived from the 
people, whom you call your friends, was wicked. But 
let us drop these beings; life is not long enough at 
the rapid pace of Paris, for us to dwell at length 
upon them. What have you been doing, dear? ” 

"I went out to Montmorenc}^, where I worked out 
some new features in the process of Dr. Ramonin 
and myself. I slept soundly ri.ght through the night — 
a thing which has not happened me in this country, 
and I woke up this morning with a song on my lips — 


‘ Come, hear me, all you hustling boys, 

Who’ve crossed the Gila’s shoals; 

Don’t take your ills like deadly pills! 

Your mountains are but moles.’ 

I beg your pardon ; it astonished my mother, who 
had not heard me thus giving tongue to my gladness 
since my boyhood, when I used to come home from 
seeing you. With that intuition of mother’s — that is, 
doubly feminine — she exclaimed: ‘You have seen her 
again!’ I could not do less than tell her all the 
story. She listened to the end and gave me a kiss; 
she did not approve, but said: ‘Have a care! in a 
game of passions like these, her life as well as her 
honor are at great stake.’” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


189 


“She may fear for your sake — ^^but you — do you fear 
anything? No, of course not. You are not of the 
sort that fear, and you need not do it for me. I shall 
go and see your mother; she was like one to me. 
For what have we gone through our destiny but to. 
have that bond of community? But what blindness 
was ouis — how easy it was for us to have been happy 
together, as we may be yet. Come, you are happy 
now? ” 

“Yes, completel}^ happy,” he seemed to say with his 
eyes, brimming with excess of rapture. 

“Right, it is good to be happy, being so just and 
natural, above all when, only on the eve, one believed 
oneself the most unfortunate of mortals! Ah, I feel 
so untroubled in your presence. I am so sure of you 
that I do not distress myself about my safety. In 
your love I sun myself— I can rely on your honor; I 
can repose on my conscience. Miss Vanness had no 
need to dilate on the subject to explain that she 
loved you. It is readily understood that you would 
entrance a woman of that hybrid race-^you who have 
ventured among the desperadoes and lived amid the 
ferocious demons of the border.” 

Lucien might have softened the colors in her ideal 
picture of the South-west, but that was not material 
when she might incur the fate of the Duchess de 
Praslin, murdered by her husband not so far from this 
place, with atrocious traits which a Navajo might not 
surpass. It is not only in jungles and canons that 
the human leopards skulk.” 

“What are your working hours?” 


igo THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

He looked his wonder that she should put this 
apparently impertinent question, but she insisted. 

“All day long, “ he said. 

“You mean when you are sad — have sorrows — doubts 
that I love you. But now that you are encouraged 
and ought to be contented, you sleep well, do you? 
How dare you, sir, confess that you sleep? Whoever 
heard of a real lover sleeping? Oh, I know what you 
are going to say — that it was to dream of me. Well, 
I, too, went to sleep like a child. Now, listen — 
since the heart no longer teases the mind, you ought 
to do twice as much work as before in a given time. 
And the time that is saved out of the hours of toil — 
better done, too, than before, as you will see — will be 
mine, for I want to see you every day, although it be 
only for an hour or two.” 

“You are not asking much,” he answered amusedly; 
“but where could we see one another?” 

“Anywhere!” she triumphantly declared; “in the 
public promenades, in the playhouses, the stores, the 
streets — at your mother’s, here — everywhere!” 

He frowned slightly, a trifle pained by this trans- 
port, which resembled the outburst of a girl who was 
disposing of her leisure to her affianced lover before 
the nuptials. 

“Are you not — were you not my betrothed?” she 
said; “the one pledged to me under heaven? the eter- 
nal bridegroom? only, some delay occurred — j^ou missed 
the train — your boat failed to connect for the Happy 
Shore Railway! but the mishap has not prevented 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


I9I 


me and you loving right on. Nay, it is just the other 
way. ’’ 

"But,” he remonstrated, without joining in her 
laughter, a little forced, “during the postponement, 
the engaged one was married to another and — but you 
do -not seem to understand what that means! ” he con- 
cluded, springing away from her side. 

“Stop! ” said the duchess; “I do know what it means 
to most — to you — but to me it signifies nothing. I 
did belong to the man — but that is so no more. I 
was given away, as the saying so truthfully runs, 
when I did not know anything about it; but as soon 
as I learnt the value of myself and the worthlessness 
of the donee, I resume self-possession. All that epi- 
sode is finished. Only one thing do I fear, that I 
shall not clearly remember the vow I was made to 
take in a day. of doubt and ignorance, and call you 
^Lucien’ before all hearers as if you were really my 
husband. Let us pray to heaven for a new future, 
since that is the only means to repair the past, and 
in the meanwhile, let us take our departure forward 
on the solid footing that you give me your whole life, 
soul and thoughts. And when you shall have sworn 
this a hundred times, we will have you repeat it again, 
and yet again, day after day, till — no, there will never 
be enough of it,- and I shall weary of it — never, 
never!” 

While she was so passionately dilating, in a voice 
sweet as if she were in her sixteenth year again, 
Gerard had returned nearer her, took a chair beside 
hers, and he contemplated her, entranced. Like one 


Ig2 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN LARIS 

learning the rites in a holy ceremonial, he repeated 
as she prompted: "Thou art, in truth, my soul, my 
thought, my life! " 

If the regained lover had his mistrust acute as 
regarded the carrying out of this hazardous pro- 
gramme, it was not so with the duchess. She knew 
that she was safe from trivial persecution in these 
rooms of hers. In plays, it is traditional that serv- 
ants should act the spy upon their employers, but in 
households of the importance of the Septmonts, this 
kind of servant is rare. The staff expect not to be 
discharged at short notice by any accident; dukes do 
not become bankrupt like merchant princes and 
bank-presidents; if one dies, for they are mortals in 
that respect, the son of the next male heir succeeds 
while the wages run on just the same, and the son 
leaves the engagements as before with the steward or 
butler; he is bound by rule, and perhaps has to apol- 
ogize to the establishment below stairs for bringing 
his own valet into their distinguished and select cir- 
cle. At least, the duke had the manners and bearing 
of a nobleman and, this was soon proved for Gerard’s 
enlightenment by his sending a menial in to ask the 
duchess’ permission for him to enter. It was granted. 

Septmonts bestowed on Gerard a suspicious glance, 
fresh come as he had from Miss Vanness, and always 
irritated against his spouse the more bitterly as the 
American was cold. However, he took and kissed his 
wife’s hand with an elaborate attention which aston- 
ished her. 

"How are you feeling to-day, my dear?” he inquired 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS I93 

with a good assumption of interest. She set him at 
ease about her health but it was superfluous for her to 
^peak, for besides being rejuvenated, as Gerard gladly 
marked, she had an enhanced color which was not 
without its beauty, with her eyes so sparkling, too. 

"I am not interrupting you?” he continued, glancing 
from one to the other. 

“What should make you imagine that you disturbed 
me?” retorted the lady with a depth of scorn which he 
had not experienced in this quarter, and which she 
might have caught from Miss Vanness, whom it was 
perhaps dangerous for a woman to meet who not al- 
ready joined the league of Emancipated Women. 

Septmonts had an idea that he might be worsted in 
this encounter, for he turned away, and noticing that 
Gerard was observing him with some such look as a 
horseman gives a snake in the dust, in doubt whether 
to cut at it with his whip or ride by, he said, as inso- 
lently as can be done in the tones of perfect polite- 
ness: 

“This is M. Ge — ge — gerard, I believe?” 

“Gerard, yes, monsieur,” replied the younger man, 
curbing himself with an effort. 

“Ah, I could not be positive in such a trifling di- 
vergency. I did not have the opportunity the other 
day to cultivate the acquaintance, and I feared just 
now that I was interrupting a conversation entertaining 
to you two alone. Perhaps it was just as well that 
I sent my name in.” He took a chair, and waved his 
hand for Gerard also to put himself at ease. “I un- 
derstand that you are one of the duchess’ friends of 


194 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


youth, and were educated in company with her. Be- 
sides, you are the son of her first governess who must 
have been a most high-bred person to judge by the 
training she has given the lady who was then Mile. 
Mauriceau. It is quite natural, that, meeting with 
the lady, as the Duchess des Septmonts, ” he went on 
with emphasis, “that you old acquaintances should 
have a number of topics to discuss to which a third 
party would be a superfluous hearer, even if the hus- 
band of the lady. I trust your respected mother is 
still in the land of the living?” 

Gerard intimated in a brief tone that he was not 
yet wearing mourning for this dearest member of his 
family. 

“That is well. Does she still busy herself with 
matters of education and deportment?” 

“No, monsieur,” replied the other sternly, “but — ” 

He was perhaps going to add that the business of 
instructing aristocratic malaperts had devolved on 
Madame Gerardos son here present, but a glance from 
Catherine, who was now preaching patience, froze the 
words on his palpitating lips. 

‘Retired— with a fortune, I hope, ” went on the 
duke, wdth the rashness of a boy provoking a badger 
into leaving its kennel. “The education of Mile. 
Mauriceau was the only one which she superintended,” 
said Gerard. 

“What a loss to the community!” ejaculated the 
duke; “I should have been happy to recommend her 
to the parents of some young ladies who, in this age 
of perverted manners, stand in need of an instructress 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


195 


who would not be worthily repaid though they made 
what appeared sacrifices of lucre.’' 

Gerard rose to his feet much as if, to recall our 
parable of the horseman and the snake, it was he who 
had determined to strike the animal while hissing its 
spitefulest. 

But the duchess again pleaded with a secret glance 
for patience, and he replied calmly enough to deceive 
Septmonts as to his character. 

“My mother wants for nothing. I do not the less 
thank you, M. le Due, for your kind intentions.” 

“Oh, pray do not give me my title, under the terms 
on which we meet now, and on which I trust that we 
shall meet; it is all very well for inferiors to continue 
the custom of ^my-lord-ing’and^your graceing’ although 
we are in a country almost as democratic as the Re- 
public where you have been. As your mother is no 
longer in the service of my wife I do not see any gulf 
between us and with a little good feeling I dare say 
that in a short time, there will not be any difference. ” 

“What does this mean?” exclaimed Gerard before 
the lady could come between, though she had risen 
with some briskness, and without giving the nobleman 
even the mild title of Monsieur. 

“My meaning,” rejoined Septmonts, as insolent as 
ever in tone, but unable to keep his voice steady from 
so suddenly finding his antagonist about to take him 
by the throat, “my meaning is that, as you are a friend 
of the duchess, you must become one of mine. To 
show you that I treat you as though you were or soon 
will be a member of the famil}^, I beg leave to require 


196 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


my wife for a few minutes private conversation. This 
is not saying good-bye for any length of time to you 
— for you might look in again, say, in an hour, if you 
care to renew the dialogue which I am cutting in 
twain. What I am compelled to say to the duchess is 
so very grave and confidential that it may not be 
uttered in your presence. Still, I do not imply that 
if ever the subject should arise again, I would not 
touch upon it exhaustively before you.” 

"Have it as you say, this time,” was Gerard’s an- 
swer, as he bowed comprehending the two, but less 
to the gentleman than to the lady, who had gone to 
the writing-table desk, and was scrawling a few lines 
in that enormous hand which is not the more elegant 
because it is favored by the fashionables of England. 
As the young man turned at the doorv/ay to judge by 
a searching glance whether the duke contemplated mis- 
chief when he should have his wife at his mercy, the 
latter held up her hand with the note, which she had 
quickly folded, and beckoned him back a few steps to 
take it, while she said in a voice measured and un^ 
altered: 

“To occupy your time till your return. Monsieur 
Gerard — for I look forward to your coming back in an 
hour’s time that we may dine together, if you are not 
better engaged for the evening— will you be kind 
enough to carry this letter to my father? he lives in 
the south wing of this house. I am asking him to 
come and dine, also, that is, he, you and I — a little 
committee of three. He told me that he would be 
happy to talk old times over with you. If he should 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


197 


be at home, go in and tell him that I am expecting 
to see him as soon as possible.” Then, infusing in 
her bland voice an acid which was of novel usage to 
her lips but which she certainly used with caustic 
effect, she went on: ‘Task your 'pardon for charging 
you with this errand, but, yesterday, I wrote a letter 
which miscarried, and I fear that a similar fate may 
befall this one, which is in haste. No farewell, since 
we shall meet so soon again.” 

After giving him the letter, she gave him her hand; 
it was as cold as the paper, but in her eye shone a 
fire not to be dulled easily and to be extinguished 
only in the grave. He returned the clasp with his 
pulse beating rapidly, and bidding her good-bye con- 
fidently, he honored the duke, who did not like this 
unforeseen incident, with a defiant ‘‘Keeo well till we 
meet again. ” 

“Just so,” muttered Septmonts, “I will admit to 
myself that with a robust Hector of your nature, 
fortified by exercises with cowboys and horse-breakers, 
that I have need of my health, too. Happily, it is skill 
that has much to do with the driving a foil to the 
heart or a pistol bullet to the brain. Now, for the 
duel of another kind.” 

When he turned, his feminine adversary was on 
guard and waiting for him to attack. 


CHAPTER X 


THE KIND OF LOVE THE DUKE DID NOT UNDERSTAND 

In the situation in which the Duke of Septmonts 
confronted his wife, some husbands pardon, some plead, 
some speculate, others close their eyes and others still 
laugh it off. He was so thorough a man of the world 
that he was inclined to say, “What is the odds as long 
as they are happy! “ but he had no hopes of handling 
the gold of his new friend, and he believed with 
Miss Vanness, that Mauriceau’s would be withdrawn 
if he parted from his daughter. 

His reflections should have been made before, since 
the duchess inferred from it that he was afraid of the 
lightnings which he had attracted toward him; and 
as the weaker vessel ofttimes does, she spurred her- 
self into defense by making the attack. 

“It was you who intercepted the letter which I 
dispatchecf yesterda}^ to M. Gerard?” she began. 

“Yes; that is, I found it. Intercepted — no?” 

“Do not let us argue about words,” she said con* 
ternptuously and continuing her line of assault, “and 
mine was the proper one. When a person does not 
send on to the address the letter which has fallen 
into his hands, that is intercepting it. And you read 
it?” 

“Yesterday, after our visit to Miss Vanness, I had 
198 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


199 


a presentiment that you would write to M. Gerard. 
That came to pass. I found the letter, and I read 

it.” 

“By what right?" she demanded, with burning 
cheeks. 

"By that which empowers a husband to know with 
whom his wife corresponded and the subject of the 
correspondence.” 

"I thought that the seal of my letters was as sacred 
to you as yours has always been to me.” 

He laughed low and scornfully at her thinking that 
in such matters the rule worked both ways. 

"Let that pass,” she said. "What do you intend 
doing with that letter?” 

As he did not know, he remained silent, and she 
was obliged to repeat the question, stamping her foot 
and frowning. 

"Have a little patience,” he said, "for I had a great 
deal with M. Gerard, a while ago, although the desire 
to have him assisted out of the house between a pair 
of our English footmen was not absent from me. My 
not being so — my stooping to treat him as the son 
of an old servant of the family — ” 

He paused, expecting an outburst, but it was not 
on this point that she meant to cross swords. 

“As the son of an old servant of the family, whose 
mother, the servant in question, was discharged by 
your father on account of the complicity she gave to 
your flirting with her dear Lucien — ” 

This time, Catherine winced, but she set her lip 
firm and said nothing, although the working of her 


200 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


facial muscles, controlled creditably but with diffi- 
culty, betrayed that he would not gain anything by 
the firing being reserved. 

“In short, I treated M. Gerard gently, as you saw, 
because it is with you that I should have the prelimi- 
nary explanation.” 

“If you entertain such opinions, let me tell you, 
monsieur, that it will be better for us not to have ex- 
planations. ” 

“Why so?” he demanded, throwing himself across 
her path, for she started to leave the room to him. 

“Because that day will be most painful and humili- 
ating when that takes place.” 

“For whom?” he asked, loftily as if he could not 
be a guilty accuser. 

Stopping and looking him in the face, she re- 
sponded; 

“It will be for you.” 

“I will run the risk of that, because I forsee the 
end. Will you be obliging enough to answer me — 
ought I to kill that man?” 

“Yes — if it is a crime for me to love purely and 
entirely. ” 

“Purely?” he sneered as if he did not know the 
word. “You love him?” 

“With all my soul!” she hurled into his teeth. 

“And you persist in repeating ^purely?’” 

“I am not trying to make you believe anything, but 
I do not shrink from answering when you question. ” 

“It is of little moment, anyway,” he said with a 
triumphant voice. “Your letter is couched in terms 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


201 


which leaves no distinction betwen the truth and 
what looks like it; by itself it condemns you as 
guilty, if we should come to a trial for separation.” 

She smiled so gratefully that he saw that was an 
end she was looking forward to, and he hastened to 
add to diminish her pleasure, “But I am not wishful 
for it, at least as yet.” 

“I understand that, but I shall lodge the com- 
plaint and you will have to stand the trial.” 

Miss Vanness was threatened, now, and the tables 
might be turned. 

“Though you won, it would be a barren victory.” 
he said with spite, “for, previous to the delivery of the 
verdict, I should provoke M. Gerard into a duel and 
I should kill him.” 

“Unless he kills you — the times are changed, my 
lord, and you cannot go out to fight even a peasant’s 
son, clothed in armor against his naked breast. You 
could not parade your dead before me, for I shall not 
survive his fall.” 

“Women talk in this romantic vein, but their lives 
are still the longest on insurance tables,” observed 
Septmonts, sarcastically. 

But, on seeing her proud and resolute mien, he 
doubted his taunt, for if there was a woman to act up 
to her threat, she seemed the one. “You speak of short- 
ening your young life,” he said with a complete change 
of tone, as he recalled Miss Vanness’ hints. “Then, 
I should turn to another means, the only one I had in 
mind when I came in, I assure you.” 

She was not listening, but when he said "I intended 


202 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


to forgive all and overlook all,” she was amazed. 

“How would such as you, so worldly, so earthly, 
how would you learn the divine art of forgiving?” 

Through my love for you.” 

“Your love — love for me?” she tossed her head. “Is 
love then found, as one finds letters? But cease to jest. 
I assure you that we stand on unsafe ground.” 

“Why should I not love you?” 

“You never have loved me.” 

'T did not know your worth before; I appreciate my 
diamond since friction with the rougher passions have 
polished it. Am I the first husband who repented and 
repaired his wrongs?” 

“What is your drift?” she demanded coldly. 

“You were frank with me, and I will pay you in 
the same unsophisticated coin. When I read that 
love-letter addressed to another, a strange thing took 
place within me. In the first place, admitting that 
its expressions were those of the most tender affection, 
such as would doom you in the eyes of the most im- 
partial judges, still I felt at once that you _were as 
pure and unblemished as on the day when I received 
you from your father. Behold what the human heart 
is! Instead of hating that man, I envied him; instead 
of accusing you, I understood you, and I tried to 
gladden myself by fancying that the letter was ad- 
dressed to me. I read it more than once, and I said 
to myself: ^what eloquence! what nobility! I must 
some day receive from that hand such a letter as this!’ 
In this mood, as new to me as to you, I came to see 
you. Do you want to know the motive of my bearing 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


203 


toward M. Gerard? it was an impulse of jealousy 
which I could not restrain. I found a pleasure in 
humbling the man whom you love, in your presence, 
when his love for you was based on too much respect 
to allow him to answer me otherwise than he did. But 
I am ready to hold out my hand, unweaponed, to him, 
when he returns, if you like. It depends upon you. 
While you were so unjustly demanding what fiendish 
combination I meditated on the possession and manip- 
ulation of that note, I was only puzzling my brain for 
a method of restoring it to you as handsomely as pos- 
sible, and I am ready to return it for the sole hope of 
receiving as welcome a one some day. Since your 
husband has been such a dullard as not to value you 
properly, allow me to correct him, being a new self 
now, and do all that is possible to make him forgot- 
ten. Perhaps I regret a little that wrath a while ago 
which became you so well, but I should take so much 
pleasure in soothing it; and indulgence ought to be 
admirable in you, if not better to see. Really and 
truly, I am no longer the same man since I read that 
letter, probably because you are not the woman you 
were before you wrote it. Say one word and you can 
have that letter.” 

He held it out to her loosely between his fingers, 
but she bade him keep it, and would have passed him 
by. 

“You are cruel and imprudent,” he hissed, grating 
his teeth. 

“It is possible that the strange speech which I have 
just heard hides some secret thought,” she said, re- 


204 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


flectively. “I prefer to believe this than admit that 
the insult was to be greater and, that, for the acme 
of infamy, you are sincere. I do not wish to study the 
matter deeply; I wish to know nothing about it, but 
I want the conversation to be clear and precise because 
you have required it, and it will undoubtedly be our 
last. When I married you, my lord, I did not love 
you, but I firmly believed that I no longer loved the 
man who had given me up through dignity. In my 
ignorance of things, I craved no more than oblivion 
of him, and had you then, in good faith or otherwise, 
held the language just now emplo3^ed, it is likely — 
nay, certain, that I would have been a happy and faith- 
ful wife. It takes so little in a husband to convince 
a girl, to whom the representatives of heaven and 
other men say that she has all the duties to perform 
and he all the rights to exercise! Unfortunately you 
married me wholly to pay for the faults, follies and 
rovings of 3^our past life, and to continue them at 
3^our ease. Your friends were commencing to blush 
for you, your family were on the verge of repudiating 
you, your club was about to expel you, on account of 
your unsettled gambling debts, and your society only 
w^aited for a flagrant scandal to ^cut’ 3'ou, when you 
liquidated your scores by means of a plot which I be- 
gin to get a glimpse of.” 

“A plot?” repeated the duke, only now able to check 
the flow of pent-up fury, which rushed upon him and 
overwhelmed him slowly but unremittedly like a 
glacial stream. 

“A plot. Monsieur,” returned the duchess firml3q 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 205 

with flashing eyes. “You were going to catch at the 
raft of succor so often floating across the Atlantic for 
you, impoverished noblemen. You were on the brink 
of marrying Miss Vanness, but she by far preferred that 
I should be the prey — she told me so yesterday,” she 
said sharply to forestall his half-hearted denial. “I 
know it is hard to believe this, remembering the his- 
toric name which you bear — which we bear, fortu- 
nately for you. As a matter of course, I was plunged 
into ignorance of all this; the footpad and the insti- 
gator of a crime do not give the victim a hint of their 
scheme. 

“But I forgive you for what is not your fault. You 
were reared in idleness, luxury and pleasure; you 
were never taught to toil, and your self-respect was 
worn off. But what makes me hate you, and what 
I shall never forgive you for, is that you did not know 
how to esteem and respect the maiden who not only 
restored you to your self-respect but to that of others; 
I reintegrated you in that society which was on the 
point of casting you out. That maiden who was 
handed over to you, ignorant and defenseless, has been 
assimilated by you with notorious bad women; she 
ought with these hands,” she said, darting* them out 
with such energy in illustration that he started back 
in alarm, “she ought to have turned you out of the 
nuptial chamber where you staggered in, tremulous 
with drunkenness and debauchery. I have so deeply 
blushed fcr you and for me, that I buried these 
dreadful memories in the depths of my soul, whence 
they would never have been exhaled if you had not 


2o6 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


had the audacity again to offer me what you style your 
love. You are a wretch!” this she hurled at him so 
that he could no longer maintain the pretense of in- 
difference, and sprang to his feet, quivering with rage 
and wounded pride. “Yes, I have recovered the 
friend of my girlhood — my swee^theart, if you like to 
hear me call him so — a generous heart, a haughty 
and loyal spirit, to whom anew has gone out my 
heart entire. Yes, on coming out of the gilded den 
of that American lioness, which visit you imposed 
on me — by the way, she is worth in one finger all your 
body — I wrote to that man the letter which you stole, 
one in which I strove to tell how much I despised 
you and loved him. Because he is a true gentleman 
— because he comes from a country where a woman is 
always treated properly, and the dog v/ho fails in that 
line is promptly spurned as a cur — he let your rude- 
ness pass, but if you are deficient in respect to him a 
second time, he will cuff your ears, and if you resent 
3^our fit correction and appeal to the arms of gentle- 
men, he will slay you. He will not fear the pocket 
pistol with which you have threatened me until I bade 
you tremble lest some night I should snatch it out 
from under the pillow and lodge the lead in your 
skull. And then I shall be his entirely, for there will 
be enough blood shed and tears poured forth to efface 
all traces of your abominable kisses.” 

Such a frank outpour and so much contempt raised 
Septmonts to the highest paroxysm of anger; he flew 
at her, and seizing her arm, lifted his right hand to 
strike her on the mouth that would still denounce him. 






mmrntfillftlBtimmm 








)''■ / . 'W//- ^ '/'o.//'<y'''//. 


'■'///. 
W''/y/'/ ■ 







nL.- xx.-ay T’- • “”Tr r^BrThTf » 























** ‘Silence!’ he screamed.”— (p. 207.) 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


207 


"Silence! " he screamed. 

"If you dare strike me," she replied, "and make 
the list of your brutal acts complete — the more cow- 
ardly as you know that I should no more tell him this 
than the rest." 

But he heard steps on the otherside of the tapestry 
and not wishing to have a servant as a witness to 
what would have discredited him utterly, he let go his 
clutch, which left a livid ring on her shapely arm, 
and drew back. It was none too soon, for Mauriceau 
entered without knocking, thinking to find his daugh- 
ter by herself. 

"Oh, good! it is you, father dear!" she exclaimed. 
"1 wrote to you to come as I foresaw what has hap- 
pened; I regret that you did not arrive sooner, that 
you might have seen with your own eyes what is the 
sequel of the unions formed paternal ambition, 
filial ignorance, and marital baseness. The termination 
was a scuffle, in truly exquisitely aristocratic taste, 
between this gentlenian and myself. This incident 
will at least have the advantage ot making reconcilia- 
tion — any meeting between us — henceforth impossible. 
I have had enough of the man you chose and — I leave 
him. Listen: he knows that I love another man. 
He has found — waylaid, abstracted, intercepted, sto- 
len a letter of mine, with which he means to excite a 
scandal; try for your sake that it shall be as mild a 
one as possible. It is all the same to me. If he 
wants money, give him some. The main thing is that 
I shall see him no more." 

She wished her father good-bye but did not favor 


2o8 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


Septmonts with even the nod of politeness to a stran- 
ger. The duke had never seen her carry herself with 
an air more beseeming a lady of rank; she was so 
much improved by this animation and the heightened 
color that, altogether he doubly suffered by this 
threatened loss of the pearl of which he had miscal- 
culated the value. He did not make any attempt, 
even with words, to stay her, but quickly taking the 
seat she had placed at the writing table, he scratched 
a few lines. He rang for a servant, and did not say 
anything to the questioning-eyed father until after 
the footman had taken the note, which was for 
Mr. Clarkson, and withdrawn. 

“What does this mean?” inquired Mauriceau. 

“Your daughter has acted in such a way that a duel 
with her paramour and a trial for divorce have be- 
come unavoidable, although I have done all I could 
to prevent them.” 

“A duel? a divorce case? a scandal? 3^011 daie assert 
that my daughter — “ 

“She had a lover! ” interrupted Septmonts, more 
bold than when he had the woman to face. 

“That is false,” cried Mauriceau, clinching his 
fists and making the duke recede a step from the 
furious countenance which he assumed. 

“The letter which I hold proves that,” he sneered 
triumphantly. 

“A letter? a woman’s letter — illegible anyway, and 
full of nonsense if interpreted,” said Mauriceau with 
equal scorn. 

“It is addressed to Lucien Gerard,” said the duke 
deliberately. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 20g 

“Gerard? Gerard has never ceased to esteem and 
respect your wife. I have come from seeing him, and 
I will answer for it that he is the most honorable man 
in creation.” 

“If he was all that, why the deuce did you not give 
him your daughter? These high characters in extrem- 
ities remind me too much of the scene on the scaffold 
where the priest, having absolved his good subject, 
the criminal, and pronounced him pure and perfectly 
worthy heaven, lets him be guillotined — if he were half 
he says, they should make a bishop of him. If your 
M. Gerard is half what you say, why did not the 
Americans make a President of him?” 

“You are going the right way to work to cause me 
soon to regret that I blundered,” returned Mauriceau 
tartly. “Do you say this letter condemns Catherine?” 

“It accuses her — that is enough for me,” snarled 
the duke. 

“How did it fall into your hands?” 

“You heard correctly enough — I stole it.* 

“Catherine lost her temper; I implore you to think 
that the reputation of my daughter is at stake.” 

“It was she who ought to have borne this in mind,” 
said the duke sullenly as on the paper still before him, 
with the wet pen, he drew crazy lines which betrayed 
the clashing ideas in his brain. 

He was walking on the sword-blade edge now; a 
misstep and he would be lost forever. This time, 
he would be a beggar, and the heiresses who were 
hunting for titled partners would not dare to grasp at 
his sullied coronet. 




210 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARrS 


“Gerard was her friend in girlhood— in childhood! 
A letter to him would not be a fault, but only a 
piece of thoughtlessness.” 

“People have to pay for such slips,” said the duke 
spitefully. 

“Is that all,” said Mauriceau, brightening up, for 
he began to believe that the affair was not sc serious, 
and that his noble son-in-law was frightening him in 
order to extract a large check by a new device. 
“WhaPs the figure?” 

And he went to the writing-desk, and taking the 
chair vacated by the gentleman, was drawing out his 
private check-book when Septmonts stayed him with 
a gesture in well-assumed lofty indignation. 

“No,” he said, “she will have to pay more dearly 
than you calculate. I see that you imagine this one 
of those storms in a teacup which blow over. The 
culprits will only have to be more wary when they 
meet in public, and the members of our set who 
have the cue need only draw their skirts a little 
closer round them when the duchess goes by. A few 
of the pious, severe old dowagers may keep up a 
frigid reserve, freezing but endurable, but as we are not 
bound to have them by our side at every meal, w^ewill 
not let their attitude pain us. No, Monsieur, this is 
not so petty a matter, but one which will be carried 
unflinchingly to the bitter end.” 

“Reflect on what you are going to do,” still re- 
monstrated M. Mauriceau, rising and throwing him- 
self bet^veen him and the doorway. 

The duke had given the problem due reflection; he 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


2II 


did not like to lose the money of this merchant, but 
he thirsted for his rival's blood. If only he could 
have decoyed Gerard into a gambling duel and 
“rooked'’ him before he sent a bullet to his heart! 

“A duel on tliis account and a case of this sort are 
dishonor to a woman,’’ said Mauriceau, sadl}^ 

“But to hush it up would be shame and ridicule to 
the Duke des Septmonts.” 

“Confound you all! — spill blood if you must, but I 
do not want my daughter to be spattered. Will you 
or will you not return that letter?’’ 

“Are you going over the same ground again?” 

Time w^as when this unheroic little merchant had 
taken the “bounce” out of a saucy commercial trav- 
eler or a shop-assistant by the exhibition of righteous 
indignation in an unexpected form. He flung down 
his hat this way, pulled off his coat and flung that in 
another direction, and without word of warning, 
placed himself where he cut off the duke's retreat. 
Then, raising his fist in a. naturally pugilistic posi- 
tion not devoid of merit for an amateur, he said in a 
voice supporting the attitude: 

“By heaven, I tell you that you must give up that 
letter to the lady!” 

But Septmonts had become the calmer as his an- 
tagonist grew violent. 

“Threats are useless,” he said; “I have foreseen 
everything. That letter which I dispatched was for 
Mr. Clarkson, who will be my second.” 

“Clarkson, your second?” 

“Exactly — a man who has eaten his man before 


212 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


breakfast. He is just the supporter for a duel to the 
death — for I assure you that this will not be one of our 
affairs of honor, in which a second or the surgeon is 
wounded by a blundering shot, and all animosity is 
drowned in champagne at breakfast.” 

Before this determination, Mauriceau resigned 
himself, and he began to hope a little that his son-in- 
law would receive a lesson from the Americanized 
Gerard, in spite of his complacency as a dead-shot. 
But in any event, the outlook for his daughter was 
one to becloud him, and he was grave when, instead 
of a servant, Gerard stalked into the room. The 
duke smiled with satisfaction. 

“If you are looking for the duchesss, Monsieur,” 
said he most quietly, “you may spare yourself the 
trouble. The lady is not here, but retired to her own 
apartments. ” 

“I am not seeking Madame la Duchesse, ” replied 
the new-comer, “but you, Monsieur. And the lady is 
the less wanted, as what I desire say to you is not to 
be uttered in her presence — that is why I withdrew 
from it a while ago.” 

“Can it be spoken before this gentleman?” 

“Fully so,” responded Gerard nodding to M. Mau- 
riceau. “Monsieur, you spoke of my mother then in 
terms which I do not allow, and it was before a lady.” 

“The lady of your love,” added Septmonts, without 
the slightest consideration for Mauriceau, who had 
his faults but still was the father of his wife. 

“The lady whom I love,” said Gerard, "that is 
so.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


213 


'*1 had no intention to hurt your filial feelings, Mon- 
sieur,” went on the duke, “but you certainly meant to 
hurt mine by speaking thus. In making such a dec- 
laration to me, you are giving me the right to take it 
as an offense.” 

“If it is not enough of one to be answered,” said 
Gerard, advancing with an evident intention to 
strike the duke, “then let this blow — ” 

This was the third time in one day that Septmonts 
had been exposed to being struck — by his wife, by her 
father, and now by her lover; decidedly, it was time 
to save his ears by cutting a throat. 

“Enough,” he said, keeping his marked coolness, 
“in an hour, friends of mine will present themselves 
at your house to settle merely the time and place for 
our meeting. Being the insulted party, I have the 
choice of weapons,” he concluded with ill-disguised 
satisfaction and a malignancy which made Mauriceau’s 
blood run cold. 

“You tried to have it this way,” he muttered. 

“You have hit it,” said the duke, with a smile. 

“Then, you are — never mind what. Gerard,” said 
the dry-goods prince earnestly, “let me be your sec- 
ond.” 

Lucien accepted the hand held out to him, and with 
him left the room. The duke was abandoned to his re- 
flections, on the threshold of his wife’s apartments, 
which he had not the courage to invade. 

“After I shall have killed him, we will see,” he 
murmured. 

“Mauriceau is mad. People will say that he was 


214 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


an immoral father who connived at the amours of his 
daughter. At the least, they will say that he was an 
imbecile — but what will they sa}* of me if the whole 
story is told? that I am a blackguard. I must at least 
show that I fought well — if only to please Reina.” 


CHAPTER XI 


DEATH SHALL NOT DIVIDE THEM 

M. Mauriceau had* not far to seek for a companion. 
In Guy Deshaltes was the very second that was lack- 
ing to Gerard. He knew more of the differences in 
the Septmonts house than others, and understood all 
at the first word from the merchant. His daughter 
had pointed out Guy to him as a gentleman in whom 
he might place entire confidence. He was not long 
discovering that the frivolous dandy, grown sober, 
held her in high esteem, and respected her none the 
less for her behavior in the trying dilemma in which 
she was placed. 

As a matter of course. Dr. Ramonin was chosen for 
the surgeon, without whose presence a duel becomes a 
great crime in legal eyes, in order that a wound only 
severe should not become mortal for want of skilled 
attention in time. Mauriceau persisted in his primary 
resolution to be Gerard’s second, as the only means he 
had to publicly affirm his daughter’s innocence. 

He felt certain that an attempt would be made to 
disguise the true cause of the duel, and that instead 
of championing his daughter, Gerard would seem to 
fight for his insulted mother, a most popular ground 
to win the approbation of a French jury. But he be- 

215 


2i6 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


lieved that nobody would be deceived, and he had 
resolved to act straightforwardly. His pride and 
stupidity had led to a sufficiency of blunders and mis- 
eries, and he was going to try to repair them. If the 
duke were killed, that would settle matters; if he 
survived, a separation was inevitable between Cath- 
erine and the coroneted one. The duke would do all 
he could to prevent it, and make it cost Mauriceau 
dear, but the latter^s appearance as the second of his 
opponent would render the divorce imperative. In the 
trial, so certain to take place, the old man was also 
fixed on the open course; he would tell the truth about 
the noble fortune-hunter, even though he were obliged 
to expose his life beside the other’s, as well as his 
daughter’s. When the tribunal should hear how the 
marriage was contrived and what it had cost the dry- 
goods merchant to make a duchess of his girl, some 
might say the father-in-law was a fool, but others 
would add that the son-in-law was a scoundrel. 

Deshaltes was busy as a firefly; a second finds plenty 
to do on the eve of a deadly encounter, particularly 
when he alone is learned in the duello, and Mauriceau 
had to leave all to him. He showed astonishing 
sympathy for the distracted parent, when most fash- 
ionables would have made a jest of him. Mauriceau 
had a grudge against the upper classes, but he was 
grateful for the honor which Guy did him. 

Another of the set turned up trumps, as the much 
affected merchant said: it was the Marchioness de 
Rumieres. Although a relative of the Septmonts, 
she felt too deep an interest in the young duchess to 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


217 


abandon her in trial. She heard all the news in the 
way usual among the aristocracy. Their idle servants 
peep and listen even if not always with evil inten- 
tions. The duke’s valet, who had overheard the 
discussion between the married couple, had run to 
relate all to his lady-love, who happened to be the 
Rumieres’ first waiting-maid. She naturally repeated 
it to her mistress, out of the lively and kindly regard 
she was good enough to entertain for her lady’s pro- 
t6g6. At once, the marchioness had the horses put 
to her carriage. 

She found Dr. Ramonin, as a kind of guard, at the 
door of the duchess’ apartment, in the absence of her 
father. He had intended to be close, but he per- 
ceived that she was as well informed as himself. 

“You will excuse me, but one is bound by discretion, 
unless one is a servant,” he said, to palliate his first 
lack of cordiality. 

“Quite so; to say nothing of your humiliation from 
your chemical combination not succeeding. Your 
third element, the reactive one, has been rather too 
violent. Your vibrion seems to me likely to triumph, 
and do considerable damage to the hale parts. If the 
gods that ought to arrive to save the heroine are not 
telephoned for and their train is not an express, it 
strikes me they will drop on us too late.” 

“You seem to be delighted,” he sorrowfully said. 

“Not at all — that is my way. All women are sure to 
be on the side of Love, and if Maximin be killed, we 
shall chorus, well done!” 

This was a pretty funeral sermon from a cousin. 


2i8 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“Is M. Gerard anything of a swordsman?" 

“He can make the steel travel in a straight line as 
becomes an engineer." 

“But I thought that fencing was taught in the 
Polytechnic School?" questioned the lady. 

“He went in for mathematics; but he has learnt 
the use of arms in a rougher and better school, in the 
Western United States. And he has a good con- 
science on his side." 

Madame de Rumieres hummed the word from the 
Huguenots, “In my good right, I hold my trust! " and 
smiled. 

“I have a good conscience, and try hard to preserve 
it. But in extreme cases, like the present, or a fire 
or shipwreck, I should not be sorry to add a ladder 
or a boat. You see, on such occasions, justice and 
right, clamored for on all sides, might be otherwise 
engaged and unable to fly to our appeal ; consequently 
we would get burned or drowned — which is always a 
nuisance. I am quite aware that we are promised a 
second life to repair the injuries we suffer in this one, 
and the bores we have supported 'merrily; but it is 
just these promises of another existence which make 
me a trifle uneasy. I would sooner have my happi- 
ness at once, although I should be judged more se- 
verely afterward. Plowever, this is the rule — we can 
do nothing. But since you tell me that M. Gerard 
has picked up a hint or two from those ingenious 
people, the Yankees, I shall go home more tranquil on 
his score. " 

“Yet a mishap may arrive," muttered the professor, 
odily. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


2 ig 


"You are a Job’s comforter." 

"The luckiest thing may be the worst." 

"Oh, you mean that if he kills the duke, he can- 
not marry the widow?" 

"No, he can change his country with her — a woman’s 
country is wherever she gets wedded," 

"Take her away to America? then I shall not see her 
any more — to say nothing of my not having seen him 
as yet — though yoy promised me 1 should. I shall die 
or he will, without my seeing that he is not a myth." 

"Yes, you shall, if you will wait awhile. He is 
expected here." 

The marchioness stared. The rival in the husband’s 
residence on the eve of a hostile encounter; but the 
house was owned by his father indaw, who was going 
to stand his supporter in the duel. She saw that this 
Americanized Frenchman and the enriched commoner 
upset all traditions and put the petty conventions of 
society at nought. They made the position a clear 
and precise one. There was detestation in the very 
spot where love had been bargained for. It was 
relentless war, in which the duke aimed to kill Gerard, 
and defame the duchess, in spite of his knowing she 
was thoroughly innocent. Gerard meant to kill the 
duke, which might not be an easy matter; the father- 
indaw took a hand in the fray, and fought for the 
woman against her husband. 

"Strange situation! " commented the marchioness, 
"it is enough to make one wonder why marriage was 
invented when the only happy people are those with' 
out its pale!" 


220 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARTS 


Ramonin, being a celibate, did not combat the prop- 
osition, but the argument went no farther, from the 
entrance of the hostess. She begged the visitor to 
excuse her delay, as she was fond of her and usually 
ran to meet her; but she was tired. The strain was 
telling on her, and if the American had any hatred 
very personal she might be gratified in seeing the hol- 
lowed and brown-circled eyes, the slightly sunken and 
pallid cheeks, and the languid carriage that had been 
almost too alert before and inclined to the plebeian. 
The new-comer had an excellent excuse on her part 
for intruding on a non-visiting day. Knowing that she 
hardly ought to stay in the mansion, nominally the 
duke’s, on the day of the duel, she offered her shelter 
under her roof. With a storm of town-talk about to 
break forth, it would be a good thing for her to be 
under the wing of an unassailable lady of the highest 
rank. The walls of Rumieres house were too high 
for any. stones to smash the glass there. 

The duchess had contemplated the change, but she 
thought that it would be taking steps far enough if 
she transferred herself to her father’s portion of the 
building. 

“Not cover enough,” remarked the doctor, as his 
parting word. “It is natural, and no more. Nothing 
is proved by a father taking the part of his child. 
Wild cats do no less." 

He had hardly gone out, leaving the ladies in 
debate when Mauriceau took his place, and his part. 
He thought the marchioness right, and thanked 
her warmly for what she had done. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


22T 


“Go with her," he said with emotion, "for she will 
take the place of the mother whom you lost too early, 
and of whom I have badly played the substitute. 
What authority would I hold over public opinion?" 

And, almost glad to have Madame de Rumieres as 
an auditress in his self-flagellation, he showed himself 
up as a vulgar, ridiculous blockhead, a common fel- 
low who had imagined that honors and happiness 
could be purchased for his children with bags of money 
like sacks of potatoes, lands or a business. 

"I have not 'scaped my deserts," he went on mur- 
muring. My daughter loved an honorable young lad, 
who loved her; it was plain that they ought to have 
been united and I was such a dunce as not to see 
that! I am the cause perhaps that this youth shall 
lose his life and my daughter die of grief. I dare say 
that I shall be pitied — I, who ought not to interest 
anybody, although I am certainly fully unhappy 
enough! " 

His sob was grotesque and the expression of his 
face, which he veiled in an Indian silk handkerchief, 
would have drawn a smile upon Madame de Rumieres' 
features at another time, from being droll, but she 
turned away her eyes as he sank on a sofa, oppressed 
with grief. Catherine ran to him, threw her arms 
around him and proceeded to comfort him, though 
her heart was a lump of lead. But he gentl}^ shook 
her off and kneeling on a hassock in spite of her 
hands and of the other lady’s remonstrance, he be- 
sought her pardon for all the harm and sorrow he had 
brought upon her and that which still might befall her 


222 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


and be due to him. It would have been a striking 
lesson for other fathers who think of sacrificing their 
loved ones on the altar where Hymen is backed by 
Plutus. It was clear that the affection between them 
was profound and that, if Catherine pined away in 
the event of the death of her beloved, the old man 
would follow her into the grave ere long. 

“Be calm, M. Mauriceau,” said the marchioness, 
sobbing and not seeing that tears were in her troubled 
eyes. 

Under her soothing words and the caresses and 
assurances of his daughter, Mauriceau recovered some 
coolness, and he was presentable when Gerard came in 
to confer with him, relative to the hostile meeting. 
Their arrangements made, the marchioness took 
Mauriceau into the adjoining room so that the young 
people might have the interview, not to be refused 
them, when the man was about to face a deadly antag- 
onist with pistol or rapier in hand. 

It was settled between the ladies that the younger 
should accept the other’s invitation and be housed 
with her that evening. The marchioness was favora- 
bly impressed with this brief glimpse of Gerard, in 
whose stalwart and alert, though firm bearing, one 
hardly divined the Parisian, emasculated by late 
hours, the vitiated air of the cafds, indulgence in 
fantastic bitters, and the frequentation of the gam- 
bling houses. 

“I accepted Madame de Rumieres’ invitation only 
because my father said that I could not go to your 
mother’s.” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


223 


Madame Gerard, since her son’s return, had been 
transferred from Montmorency to a larger and finer 
villa in Fontenay-aux-Roses. From the cherries of 
Montmorency to the roses of Fontenay was a step 
worthy of the wealthy engineer. 

“I came to tell you,” he said. 

And what more? all about the encounter which a 
lady might hear; the seconds were Deshaltes and 
Mauriceau against Clarkson and M. de Bernecourt for 
the duke. The time was in the morning. 

“But never mind this,” said he, seeing how she 
trembled and blanched still more after the pink tinge 
had disappeared which suffused her wan countenance 
when he had first arrived. What are you going to do 
after going to Madame de Rumieres?” 

She gazed off absently, for it depended on the out- 
come of that unavoidable meeting. 

“If I survive?” he queried bluntly. 

She placed her hand steadily in his — meaning that 
it should be his wife’s. 

“Alas! that is impossible, and the parting will be 
eternal between us, even if I come out all right.” 

By her look of wonder it was evident that she did 
not understand. 

“The reason is that men have foreseen everything in 
their cruel morality,” said Gerard. “One must go among 
the savages to see what the unsophisticated impulse is. 
America is invaded by the creeds of olden Europe; 
there, too, it is not the cause, the reasons, the excuses 
that are taken into consideration, but the result 
alone. The slayer is forbidden to marry his conquered 


224 the AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

foe’s widow; it was foreseen that the murder might 
be a means of divorce.” 

She simply repeated the gesture of giving her hand 
to him forever. She did not care for the title of 
wife in this case. All that was essential was their 
being in the world together. Like Riena Vanness, 
she mocked at the laws framed by man; they had 
made Catherine suffer too keenly for her to care much 
about them. If widowed, she would be free, and 
there were no descendants to whom she would have to 
render an account. 

“But if I fall?” breathed the young man, who, in 
contemplation of this treasure felt a dread and horror 
of losing her which had never tormented him in his 
experience, when he dealt with life in his hand among 
the red-skins in the character of the Indian doctor. 

“That would merely mean that we should part no 
more. In death as in life I am yours. If you die — ” 
an eloquent gesture completed the meaning. It was 
indubitable that she would leap into his grave and be 
buried with him, as Laertes promised to do with 
his sister’s corpse. 

“No,” he said sharply, “for I shall prevent it — I 
will order you to live by the right of the loving and 
beloved to command those whom they adore. If death 
comes between us, why should you invite his dart? 
With eternity before us, what matters a few days, 
more or less — above all when those few days may 
turn to the consolation of other living beings next 
the survivor?” 

“My father?” said the duchess, but not with an ex- 
cess of sentiment. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 225 

*'Your father, who made a grievous error,” returned 
Gerard, sadly ; “but he loves you and he is in pain. 
An error should not be expiated as though it were a 
crime, and who will make recompense for my crime 
against my mother? for I have sacrificed her in your 
behalf. If I am to die, robbing her of a son, remem- 
ber, let me at least leave her a daughter!” 

The duchess understood and throwing herself into 
his arms which upheld her relaxed form without 
warmth and without embracing her, she murmured; 

‘Tt is well — I will live.” 

“In that case, poor, dear victim of human error, 
you will accomplish your sacrifice unto the end,” said 
he consolingly as he held her still swooning on his 
swelling heart. “And if heaven really shall unite us in 
its golden groves, as is affirmed to us and as I believe, 
like all those w4io love profoundly and exclusively on 
this globe, then will you arrive before the spotless 
Throne with your account complete, since you awaited 
the hour fixed for your coming. Should I perish on 
the morrow, of a violent death, and in the act of try- 
ing to kill another man, my excuse will be that I was 
defending the honor and liberty of the woman to 
whom the Creator willed that I should be united, 
since she Itved me as I loved her.” 

That was all that they had need to interchange at 
that extraordinary hour, to elevate and fortify their 
souls as they stood facing death, but with love, 
holding their hands together, between them. Love 
and death! the two links by which man is joined to 
infinitude. 


15 


226 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


He was thankful to his Maker that neither had any 
cause for self-reproach. When he had seen her again, 
a short time since, believing that he had many long 
years yet to enjoy life in, he vowed that his idol should 
remain immaculate as far as he was concerned, since 
she was not free. He prepared to go; he might die 
without remorse and she could live on, without 
shame. 

“Yes go,” she said, tearing herself from his arms, 
“you require all your strength and courage. I do not 
wish you to have the last remembrance of me as a 
weak and weeping woman.” 

Indeed, the footman who came in, a few minutes 
afterward, to say that Mr. Clarkson had called on 
pressing business with the duke, noticed nothing out 
of the way in the bearing or countenance of his mis- 
tress or the young gentleman. The man said he in- 
truded as his master was not in his suite, but perhaps 
he was a spy. He added, however, that Mr. Clarkson, 
who was in a hurry, “like all Americans,” expected 
that the duchess would know what the duke wanted 
him for, to confer about, and if so, he would feel 
honored if she would receive him. 

She reflected for a moment, and without consulting 
Gerard, even with a glance, she ordered tite lackey to 
show in the Westerner. 

“Why do you welcome him?” inquired Lucien, sur- 
prised, for she knew he was the duke’s second and 
the reception was strange under the circumstances. 

“He seems to want to speak with me,” she answered 
so absently that he was surprised again. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


227 


But he was in haste to depart, not liking this 
appearance of the domestic, and after saying that a 
note would find him up to the Ikst minute at his 
mother’s new address, which she jotted down, they 
were parting with too prolonged a grasp of the hand 
when Clarkson came striding in. 

He came to a full stop as he caught the whisper, 
“Eternally! ’’ but it was not so much the word, or the 
amazing emphasis which both threw into it, as the 
confrontation with Gerard. 

“Go,” cried the duchess, startled at the effect of 
her lover on the new-comer, and that Gerard wore a 
singular smile. 

“Hold on, right there,” exclaimed Clarkson. “No, 
you just don’t give me the all-fired cold shake, my 
friend.” And dashing forward as though he were 
traversing three yards of prairie instead of a boudoir 
carpet, he threw one arm half-round the Frenchman 
in the Spanish-American embrace and clutched with 
the other hand the right of Gerard, almost shouting 
with joy: 

“It’s the Canuck-Injin Doc., by the great horned 
serpent of the Mokis! Well, if I ain’t monstrously 
delighted to grip you, then this lady ain’t a prize 
beauty, and I — Lord-^^1 whar have you been shelv- 
ing your noble self all this time from me, and me 
just a-hunting all the footstool for you! ” and embrac- 
ing him again with a sort of hug learned from ursine 
practices apparently, he choked off an Indian war cry, 
and, between sobbing and laughing, repeated in all 
the tones of gladness, “My old pard. — my bono com- 


228 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


panyero — my caniarader to the stupefaction of the 
duchess who had never seen such an unfettered giant 
or any man in sucli an exhibition of unschooled effu- 
sion of the heart. 

"I cave/’ replied Gerard, trying to release his 
crushed hand and using a language as incomprehensi- 
ble to the third party as the Americanos; “you have 
me tight. I am the Indian doctor, and I am over- 
joyed that my prescription for you was acted on so 
that you are hale and hearty.’’ 

“Why did you not tell me who you were when you 
took the engineering contract for your new process, 
and wait till I got within tomahawk throw of that 
Dr. Ramonin, who ought to have given me a hint.’’ 

“Because I threw it up on learning that Miss Van- 
ness had an interest in your enterprise — ’’ 

“Miss Vanness — My Mrs. Clarkson that was,’’ and 
he laughed huskily. “Oh, that^s another pair of moc- 
casins — she and I are two. You need not do anything 
to benefit her, but you and I must paddle a little 
longer in the same canoe — see?’’ 

With a gesture, Lucien reminded him that there 
was a lady present to whom the inroad had been too 
boisterous not to be alarming. 

“I beg your pardon, Ma’me, ’’ said he with a 
long sweeping bow of which a native Californian 
would be proud and which quite reconciled her to 
Gerard’s friend. “Let’s sh,ip him out of the way, and 
I am entirely at your majes — your grace’s service! 
Got the handle right haven’t I, M. Gerard — since you 
are M. Gerard. You trot along. I am testing the 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


229 


solidity of the chairs in the Hotel Splendide. Run 
along little boy!” he concluded, all but shoving the 
half-amused Frenchman out of the room. 

“Lucien Gerard?” he repeated, in a fit of musing 
so that he forgot his Castilian manners. ‘‘It is he 
whom the duke don’t seem to cotton to. Hello, 
‘Eternally!’ I heard them say when I bounced in off 
the flunkey’s bat — great Winfield! this ain’t the gal 
he left behind him, is she? it looks uncommonly like 
a couple of sparks. Wonder if I am the big, blunder- 
ing bellows that begins to blow as the flame wants 
feeding and kindles all to a blaze?’' 


CHAPTER XII 


THE second becomes FIRST 

♦ 

After this singular observation to himself which 
seemed dictated by intuition, the American turned to 
the spell-bound lady and said: 

“Well, I really beg your pardon, Ma’me, for 
being shaken off an even keel, but I never for a mo- 
ment s’pected that M. Gerard was one who snatched 
me out of a human yaller jackets’ nest. But never 
mind that now.’ Enough that we are old friends, part- 
ners, as our saying is, and your being a friend of his, 
can handle me like an old whip. You can hit pretty 
hard with me, too, without much fear of me flying off 
the handle. But that is outer noos, if you will allo\v 
for the twist in the accent your beautiful language 
gets on the plains when it has met a norther. I made 
bold to squeeze in because when I looked in at my 
diggings, I found a note from your better-half, saying 
he was bound to see me right away, without letting 
on what the business was. I hear the duke has 
stepped out. That is a queer way of keeping an ap- 
pointment, but I do want to know what he wants to 
yank me out of my comfort to do for him. Now, if it 
is something in which your ladyship takes stock — if I 
have to stop a train, blow up an ocean gre3^hound or 

230 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


231 


find funds for a default in a bank of which he is 
president, count on me to the last grain of dust — ^ 
savey? ” 

The duchess only parti}’’ understood the strange 
speech, in which Americanisms struggled with French 
of school-book cast not much like that of fashionable 
Lutetia; but Gerard’s evident good-will to him, and 
his frank expression of owing his life to her lover, 
converted him into one of her own coterie. 

“I should have thought that M. des Septmonts 
would have given you an idea.” 

Clarkson shook his head. 

“Did not his note contain an inclosure — another 
letter to be held by you as a deposit?” 

Clarkson replied in the negative. 

“Are you really speaking the truth to a lady?” 

‘T never lie; I am too busy; lies tangle a man up 
and lose siich a heap of time.” 

“This is some secret to be preserved. It may be 
that the letter I mentioned has been confided to Mrs. 
Clarkson — ” 

“You mean Miss Vanness — she dropped my name 
when she cut adrift from me,” said Clarkson ruefully. 
“She would have said so when I stated that I had the 
call from the duke and was going.” 

“Divorced, she is not bound any longer to tell you 
everything,” said the duchess slyly. 

“She must be rather sweet on you if she tells you 
anything. ” 

“It is just the other w^ay, ” returned Catherine, re- 
calling the women’s war; “she did not conceal how she 


232 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


detested me, and was going to do me all the harm 
she could.” 

“Harm you,” repeated Clarkson, like one who had 
caught a fiend torturing a lamb or lovely bird, and 
could not believe his eyes. 

“What for? What have you ever done to her?” 

“Nothing. I have known her two days only; but — 
no, it is her secret, and she alone may tell it to you. 
Once a husband, always a husband, I have been 
brought up to believe.” 

At this phase, which opened boundless possibilities, 
the thoughtful brow of the breezy stranger became 
corrugated and fire was kindled in his deep-set eyes. 

“My father was told by the duke that a letter had 
been sent to you which I wrote. Know that it was 
stolen from me and with it all that evil will be done 
me which Miss Vanness threatened me with.” 

The hearer’s mien assumed a pained expression 
which the lady did not understand. 

“A stolen letter, eh? we must learn straight off if 
she has this letter. I will write to her to come over 
right away as I have something important to com- 
municate to her. Will you give your janitor the 
order to let her in? I ask, because I have already 
noticed that your door-keepers are as high up as our 
own over thar.” 

While speaking, he had drawn a wallet out, in which 
he found v/hat he wanted; he wrote on a sheet of 
paper which, when ingeniously folded up, became a 
paper inside an envelope, and he fastened it up and 
directed it. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


233 


Meanwhile, the duchess had touched the bell for 
the servant. 

“We will have an explanation right here,” contin- 
ued Clarkson. “When a man has built a hustling city 
and named it after a woman^ whether she remains 
his wife or not, she ought to pay a little scrap of 
attention to remarks of his. Be sure of this, mad- 
ame, that I will never lend my vote to any motion 
against you or any other lady— no, Ma’me, I come 
from a country where woman is boss.” 

Then, pulling at his mustaches to hide a dry smile, 
he added half to himself; “though I don^t mind allow- 
ing that most of them go the right way to work to 
making that line of duty mighty hard to travel.” 

The footman deigning to stride in, the duchess 
said, while Clarkson handed him the note, “Have 
that letter sent on. Do not let it go astray, as it is 
not mine, but this gentleman^ s. ” 

The sarcasm might not have pierced his epidermis, 
but it was otherwise when the American, following 
him to the door much as the guard accompanies the 
deserter with fixed bayonet, hissed in his ear what — 
being English, he perfectly comprehended: 

“You lose that, and you’ll lose your ears. I want 
a brace of jack-ears to give me luck at poker — no 
such fetich to hoodoo the players as jack ears,” he 
remarked as he quitted the terrified man, and returned 
to the amused lady, pocketing a large knife which he 
had shown. 

“And so it’s about this letter of yours that was 
abstracted that the duke wants to discuss with me, eh?” 


234 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“As far as I know, Monsieur; the matter concerns me, 
but yet does not distress me. All 1 beg of you is to 
hear the whole story and act as an American, a friend 
of M. Gerard and the avowed champion of my sex 
feels prompted to do. One moment,” she said on 
the point of leaving but inspired by a new idea, 
“could I ask a service of you?” 

“Fire away, as the French guard said to the En- 
glish ditto on an historical occasion, of which I forget 
the name.” 

“I should much like you to confer with the duke 
here — not in his room. It has the advantage of solid 
walls and the words will not leak out into strangers’ 
or treacherous ears.” 

“I see! the servants, in Europe all wear a sneaking, 
eaves-dropping cut to their jib. Look at this sample,” 
he said as the footman came back to report that he 
had started the call to Miss Vanness; “Look here, 
John!” in that incisive tone which seems effective on 
menials from Alaska to Adelaide, “I want you to tell 
the boss — the duke, you know — that M. Clarkson has 
come to an anchor in the blue and spangled bud-war, 
and if he wants to hold a congress of us two emper- 
ors, it has got to be here. Skip, Johannes!” 

As the tremor of one swinging foot as he negli- 
gently scratched the heel of the other shoe indicated a 
desire to kick, the domestic quitted the apartment 
with alacrity which his mistress had not before ob- 
served. 

“Now I am going to leave you, dear M. Clarkson,” 
said the duchess with one of those smiles which 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


235 


none but Gerard or one of Gerard’s friends might 
hope to be sunned with, “I must leave you, for it is 
not a conversation which I ought to hear, if it is 
what I forecast. Come what, come may, I shall never 
forget that I have made the acquaintance of a gen- 
tleman, and that you have done all you could to 
oblige me.” 

“Bless you, I haven’t begun to do anything yet,” 
stammered the American, daunted for once. “I am 
ready to — she has gone, just when I was scaring up a 
pretty speech. Well, I do not blame Gerard after all 
for leaving America, and for saying he reckoned he 
might not go back. Bet I wouldn’t leave the coun- 
try where such a charming little person as that was 
enshrined, nohow! there is something between her 
and Lucien, that’s patent — but if I can make sense of 
half what she had been saying, then you,” — he nodded 
familiarly to an enormous Chinese mandarin in porce- 
lain which was lolling his red tongue at him in a cor- 
ner — “you are one Dutchman, and Madison Clarkson is 
another. ” 

He was at this point of his bewilderment when 
the duke, apprised of the American having inaugurated 
his advent by selecting his site for the interview, 
arrived with surprise. But he had every reason to 
conciliate and not to irritate, and he said in his suave 
voice: 

“I was so sorry not to b@ in — but as what we ave 
to say concerns men only, suppose we adjourn to my 
rooms. This is one of the duchess’ private suite 
and — ” 


236 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


"Adjourn nothing!" returned the American, sudden- 
ly taking a strong aversion to the speaker. I am quite 
at ease liere, " and certainly in this attitude, with boot 
heels on the level with his head on the back ledge of 
a double-ended sofa, there was no lack of - unembar- 
rassment. "The walls are solid and the door is apiece 
of Belize mahogany that would laugh at a rifle-ball." 

The duke went and closed the door in question as. 
well as the one at the side, where Catherine had gone 
out. As an excess of precaution he let down the 
hangings so that if there had been a crack in the 
panels, no eye could have obtained a glance of the 
two men. 

"It' puts me in mind of an old play," muttered 
Clarkson. "I regret that I listened to my courier and 
laid aside my revolver." The duke gave a wary in- 
spection to make sure that the two were almost her- 
metically sealed up together. "Luckily, I always carry 
my toothpick." Then smiling to himself, he thought 
contemptuously, "a pin would, however, be large 
enough at the point to impale this minnow." 

"This is the affair," said the duke, coming to the 
lounge where his visitor had installed himself. "To- 
morrow morning, I am going to fight a duel! " 

Clarkson lowered his feet and sat round a little, but 
it was in respect to the name of the thing, as it was 
evident by his smile that he thought poorly of a 
French duel of the period. 

"It must terminate only with the death of one of 
the combatants," continued the nobleman, perhaps 
suspecting the incredulity of his auditor. "I am the 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


237 


offended party, and, consequently having the choice 
of weapons, I select the steel.” 

“Then, I judge that you fence well?” queried the 
other with an ill-concealed sneer. 

"I believe that I am one of the best fencers in 
Paris; but the friend of mine whom I rely upon to 
second me in this affair, is one of those punctilious 
gentlemen who want to argue out every clause in the 
code of honor — ” 

“Like the old Georgian or the back-country Ken- 
tuckian,” remarked Clarkson; “I can see the char- 
acter from here.” 

“So I want you to spur him on and prevent the dis- 
cussion occupying days. I thirst to have the meeting 
immediately.” He spoke with plain fury. 

“It is clear,” said Clarkson, who had assumed a 
more stately attitude, “that you Frenchmen give these 
little difficulties an importance out of place, and put 
on no end of solemn frills which we Americans do 
not appreciate; we settle them in five minutes on a 
hotel veranda, or the street, before the town in gen- 
eral! ” 

“Exactly why I apply to you. Of course, you do 
not object to officiate for me?” 

“With all my heart:” replied the American, with 
every appearance of cordiality as he proceeded to play 
the new line which he had promptly resolved upon. 
“Ex-Mrs. Clarkson, if you will allow me to style 
her so — wanted me to be agreeable to you when the 
chance came round. You seem to be an old acquaint- 
ance of hers?” 


238 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“So, SO,” replied the duke guardedly yet with some 
complacency as he quickly reflected that the pair were 
separated. “Some four years ago, I met her, and I 
am not going to conceal from you, dear boy, that I am 
under weighty obligations to her. I was a poor old 
bach, in those days. One day, I had dropped a tre- 
mendous sum — a facer — a staggerer — at cards; I was 
trying to gather a hundred and fifty thousand francs 
all in vain as I was completely in the shallows, when 
Miss Vanness — or, the Ex-Mrs. Clarkson, if you pre- 
fer it, came to my aid. Yes, sir, she generously 
lent me the sum, which I have since repaid, of course, 
with interests, equivalent to the capital.” 

“You don’t say,” interrupted Clarkson; “a pretty 
sum to repay, and with such heavy interest. Lost 
some of your old folks, I suppose? in Europe, the 
loss of a father or such is a great resource.” 

“No, I was an orphan and had scattered all I ever 
came into. I had nobody to look to for a windfall, 
so I married for money.” 

“That so?” remarked Clarkson, eying the speaker 
as a microscopist studies a new insect: “You Euro- 
peans have that pull over us yonder, for^we only marry 
when we like the woman. In a case like yours, a 
broke-up man would put on a flannel shirt and roll 
up the sleeves, get between the handles of a wheel- 
barrow and go straight ahead till he struck something 
so hard that it knocked out his brains, or so rich that 
it filled his pockets. One or two of your Frenchmen 
are like that; I met them out there. However, every 
country has its peculiarities. Excuse my interrupting 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


239 


you. All this does not fit into my sbhedule. Let’s 
finish up with that duel.” 

“I am delighted to afford you all the details. You 
might otherwise be startled to see as one of the 
seconds on the other side, M. Mauriceau. ” 

“You never mean to say, your wife’s father?” cried 
the American, shaken out of his imperturbability. 

Septmonts nodded, smiling with enjoyment at the 
good joke. 

“This beats me. He, the second of your adversary 
— I did not think you could get up anything new 
here, but you have done it.” 

“Well, you can guess that there are circumstances 
under this affair which must not be laid bare to 
everybody. ” 

“But you do not mind me — ” 

“Not for a moment. The apparent reason of the 
duel between M. Lucien Gerard and me — ” 

“Gerard! ” echoed, Clarkson, starting up to his feet 
and towering over the dapper Frenchman. “Are you 
telling me that you are going to fight with M. Lucien 
Gerard?” 

“Do you know him?” faltered the duke, in equal 
surprise. 

“Well, I haven’t what you would call worn the 
acquaintance out with frequency,” replied the Ameri- 
can warily; “but there’s no disputing that I have 
met him; and then again, I heard the Ex-Mrs. 
Clarkson speak of him as one to whom she had done 
a great service — it is a sockdolager what a heap of 
folks that angel divine in feminine shape has done to 


240 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

creation. She saved this M. Gerard’s life when she 
was a kind of lady saw-bones, see?” 

“Ahem,” coughed Septmonts as if he had a spark 
in his throat, “I am inclined to think that she does 
not cherish the same disposition toward the gentle- 
man,” and while slowly saying this, he watched the 
American’s face, but it had become a kind of bronze 
mask with pliant features once more. 

“Why should she want to cut him up?” said the 
latter, “if that is what you mean?” 

“Women are so fickle,” returned the Frenchman, 
shrugging his shoulders and blowing an imaginary 
cloud of smoke from an equally imaginary cigar. 

“Gates of Jerusalem, the Golden!” ejaculated the 
American with one of those oaths which are long and 
drawled out to give the utterer time to frame his 
next speech. “Is she in love with him?” 

“The Ex.? Well, hardly, since she wants to have 
him killed.” 

“I do not know so much about that,” remarked 
Clarkson, with an air to imply on the contrary that he 
had had a wider experience of the gentler sex. “I have 
met instances where a woman has wished the lover 
ill, when she loved without response. I doubt it 
is because the lady, once my wife, loves M. Gerard 
that you have called him out?” 

He frowned so menacingly that the duke was not 
sorry that he could answer in all sincerity: 

“No; it is because he has the audacity to make love 
to another lady who is nearest to me — ” 

Even facing a stranger to the persons concerned, 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


241 


he would have hesitated to use the expression "the 
dearest," and Clarkson noticed the omission. 

"The duchess, I guess?" 

"Yes, Monsieur." 

"She’s a bewitching woman, and I can under- 
stand the captivation." 

Septmonts made a gesture to imply that he under- 
stood the result without admitting it was excusable 
by him. 

"If she does not care for him, it is only the tribute 
due to Caesar’s wife," returned Clarkson, with that 
allusion to the classical worthies best known which 
infallibly garnishes the discourse of the American of 
free-school education. 

"But I hold in my hands a letter which proves that 
he is improperly regarded." 

Clarkson gave him a long and searching look before 
replying slowly: 

"This alters the face of affairs. I am completely 
at your service, for I have been a married man, pro 
tern,, anyhow we are bound to stand up to — I mean 
for one another," he said with a singular twinkling in 
the eye not nearest the duke. "It would not become 
me to wink at such goings-on." 

"What an obliging fellow you are," said Septmonts 
delighted more than ever. "They say you Americans 
never do anything by halves. This is not all that I 
crave of you. We must foresee everything, and if 
I fall I want to be still avenged from the offense 
having been of the worst kind." 

"How are you going to manage it?" inquired Clark- 


242 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


son, as if, in the position of one who might be simi- 
larly placed, he longed for the expedient. 

“I want the letter in my possession to be made 
public. ” 

“Posted, eh? I have been editor of a paper once, 
but I am not one of the Republic of letters just at 
present. How can I serve you in this?” 

Septmonts carefully drew from his secret pocket a 
sealed letter which he handed over to a hand which 
received it with as little feeling as though it were a 
dish of ice-cream. 

“I am going to intrust it to you.” 

“All right.” 

“If I come off unharmed, you will restore it to me 
intact ; in the other event, give it to the court to be 
read to the public. It will be known that I was aveng- 
ing my honor, under a pretext not the real one, and 
this will so blacken M. Gerard and the duchess that 
they^cannot meet one another anymore.” 

“Pooh!” exclaimed Clarkson with sublime contempt, 
“after you Tiave gone over to the majority, what does 
it matter what the minority say?” 

“I am rather set upon it, my dear sir,” said the 
duke. “Just do it for a fellow, won’t you?” 

“Oh, anything to oblige a fellow,” returned Clark- 
son with so droll a burlesque of the exquisite’s voice 
and style that, though he meant it in earnest, the 
duke laughed. 

But becoming grave instantly, he asked: "You do 
accept the commission?” 

Clarkson was holding the edge of the letter perpen- 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


243 


dicularly to his lips and so close to them that he 
seemed testing by the scent for concealed bank-notes, 
then, whistling on the edge like a school boy, he gave 
it all a moment's meditation. 

‘ Consider it is done,” he finally rejoined. “But come 
to think of it, it is likely, almost certain, that I shall 
not be around here when this trial comes on. I was 
thinking of making a new start to-morrow early. I 
will hold over till the afternoon to be agreeable to you 
and help you through this duel; but this is about 
all I can do.” 

“Well, then,” answered Septmonts who had also 
been musing. “Just have the kindness to turn the 
letter over to Ex-MrSc Clarkson with the hint that I 
have given you, and it will be in hands as reliable 
as yours.” 

“That's so»” responded Clarkson, dreamily, and 
with another mechanical, “All right.” He examined 
the letter as if only now he grew aware that the task 
was no sinecurOo “A blank envelope. Where is 
the proof that the damaging letter was directed to 
M. Gerard?” 

“The envelope with his address is inclosed,” said 
the duke with the .grin of a monkey who has listened 
to the sounds within a- shaken cocoanut and is confi- 
dent that it contains milk. 

“Found the letter, I reckon?” queried Clarkson 
with an admiring reflection of his smile. 

“Yes, I found it before it went into the post.” 

“And having suspicions — ” 

“I am always suspicious, since I became a bene- 
dict,” returned the Frenchman, smiJing. 


^44 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


“Anyhow, you unsealed it.” 

“You have it/ 

“I must ask pardon for questioning you so closely, 
but this style of doing things is fresh to me. But 
you brought it on by saying that I ought to be fully 
posted. You know that the relations of the duchess 
and of M. Gerard have lasted since a way back?" 

“They knew one another, boy and girl, long before 
the marriage," answered the duke carelessly. 

Clarkson looked so long and even tenderly toward 
the door by which he had seen the duchess leave the 
room that Septmonts, disquieted all at once, went on 
with his revelations in a less reckless way. 

“They fell in love and I dessay they would have 
made a match of it had not the papa had another 
idea in his head." 

“Oh, this young Gerard meant marriage did he?" 

“Of course, while he had some chance, but as soon 
as Mauriceau became very rich, he was ass enough 
not to spoil her prospects, you see — and backed clean 
out, because he was plain Gerard and had not a 
golden feather to fly with. ’ So spoke the heiress- 
hunter with every symptom of disgust and miscom- 
prehension of high motives. 

"Well, it is rather a bit from a play, but it is 
handsome of the Romeo," said Clarkson, but as if he 
were not taken by surprise. 

"He went off to the Antipodes or your parts, and 
dug some gold and came back to show his gilded 
seams, as our expression goes. " 

"And as soon as he came back he renewed his love 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


245 


toward Madame la Duchesse?” said Clarkson admir- 
ingly of the daring. 

“That is where you are too sudden,” said the other 
coldly. 

“Then if the young people behaved themselves as 
in a Sunday-school, what are you kicking at? what do 
you say?” 

“Only that the letter will make everybody believe 
the worst, and that amounts to the same thing,” re- 
plied Septmonts with entire satisfaction. 

“Well, of all the — that takes the piece of confection- 
ery,” exclaimed the American in his high-charged 
language. 

“I do not understand; but you do not seem of my 
mind? ” 

“Well, you see, I cannot go the whole hog. I 
understand that a man should hit back at those who 
strike him, but not hurt those who do him no injury, 
and I have not a high opinion of those who would 
revenge themselves on a woman, even if she be guilty 
— so, when she is not that sort, and she has done a 
man a good deal of kindness, for between ourselves, 
M. Mauriceau’s girl seems to have smothered you 
with kindness — it is clear now why the old man 
sticks up for his daughter and likewise for M. Gerard, 
from the time when he is sure of their double inno- 
cence. Does he know this letter was written?” Sept- 
monts involuntarily rubbed his throat as he hung his 
head and sullenly muttered: 

“Yes, and he tried to take it from me by force.” 

“Well, I wonder he did not choke it out of you, for 


246 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


he carries more metal than you?” said Clarkson with 
the air of a connoisseur in fisticuffs. 

Septmonts chuckled and replied: “I had the pres- 
ence of mind to tell him that I did not have the 
letter on me, but had sent it on to you.” 

”You are right smart,” said Clarkson admiringly, 
so that the duke was completely reassured that he 
and a brother-knave were communing. 

“About then, M. Gerard having challenged me, the 
old gentleman fancied he would come out strong and 
turn the table on me, by roaring out in my ears in a 
deuced ungentlemanly way, d will be your second:^ 
You have the whole story.” 

“Well, duke,” said the American, putting his hands — 
one holding the letter — on his knees, and leaning for- 
ward, but still a head above the Frenchman, who had 
taken a chair, “I come from a section where the folks 
have the habit of plain speaking and mighty plain 
dealing. I am going to sum up that all these folks 
strike me as honorable — honest as the sunshine. Your 
little darling of a wife seems to me the victim of 
manners, prejudices and contrivances, which we bar- 
barians of the Far West cannot get the. clear idea of — 
and don^t want to. I am not setting up our society of 
a hundred years standing against your moss-back and 
creeper-covered one; no, sir, but right among us, if 
Mile. Mauriceau was loved by a fine fellow like M. 
Lucien Gerard, her father would have made no bones 
about transferring her to the new proprietor, or, if 
there were any getting his back up, on the old man’s 
part — these old fellows do act cantankerous now and 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


247 


then, and that’s a fact — well, she would just step out 
one fine day to pay the butcher, hook onto M. Gerard’s 
arm at the corner, and the pair would drop into the 
mayor’s office and get hitched. That’s so. Mebbe, 
old Grimes would not stump up lively, but the young 
fellow would buckle to, all he knew how, and the 
young couple would scramble along somehow. As 
for our M. Gerard, he is a man of talent and ability, 
and he’s got a heart. We are fond of men who work, 
out west, anyhow, and we are that kind of savage 
that respects them, no matter what country they hail 
from.” 

It was clear from this rhapsody, delivered with a 
lack of excitement which puzzled the hearer, that 
they did not share the same sentiments on this ques- 
tion. 

“I am giving you this explanation because I fan- 
cied that, in choosing me to be your second in this 
duel you reckoned on the sons of Uncle Sam as being 
less clear-headed or less clean-moraled than your 
people. In short, you believed that I would lend a 
hand to all the dirty little tricks which you have re- 
lated with a candor that does you credit.” 

Septmonts recoiled, conscious that he had made 
the greatest error in his life. But rallying as he 
recalled the words still stinging him, he almost 
screamed, so high was the pitch of his voice from 
rage: “Is it to my practices that you apply the epi- 

thet of dirty?” 

“You are the man, since there are only two of 
them here, though I have my doubt about your de- 


248 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

serving the designation. But, if you itch to have a 
hearing, call in the whole street.” 

“What, you say this to my face?” 

The two had risen to their feet, with the contrast 
between them of a mastiff worried by a turkey-cock. 

“I tell you to your face that it is the act of a loafer 
to squander an inheritance, lose at cards the money 
you have not got, borrow from any woman that comes 
in handy, without any notion of how you will pay 
her again, marry to dischage one’s debts, and con- 
tinuing your capers, try to revenge yourself on an inno- 
cent wife, steal her letters, abuse your skill at weapons 
to kill a valuable man — I say that this is the act of a 
loafer, which means cur, cad, scamp — and what lays 
over me is that fifty men have not told you this 
before I had to, and that I have had to travel over 
four thousand miles to inform 3^ou on the subject — for 
you look as though it were news to you and as though 
you were not yet convinced.” 

It required Septmonts’ exercise of the utmost 
self-control to meet this explosion with affected tran- 
quillity, but he managed it; he perceived what a trap 
was opening, and that he might not cross it to exe- 
cute his revenge. His desire for it was two-headed 
now, for he believed that Clarkson was not as content 
with his divorce as his wife, and so, after disposing 
of Gerard on the dueling ground, he might wound 
this American defender of his by despoiling him of his 
wife. He remembered too late that he had closed the 
doors and that this room was one of the most retired 
of the building; he had congratulated himself on this 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 249 

fact when he had conjugal broils with Catherine; 
he deplored it now. 

“Monsieur,” he said, with an effort to be statuesque, 
“you know that I cannot call you to . account until I 
shall have finished with your friend. This may be 
the grounds on which you ventured to bluster. But we 
can have a meeting soon enough to furnish a fresh 
carcass for the cold-meat box on the Transatlantique 
steamer. Meanwhile, I need not trouble you any long- 
er with the charge of that letter.” He held out his 
hand with a gesture of confidence which would have 
not discredited those robber-dukes of old, who knew 
not what refusal was, when they lusted after any- 
thing. 

“Not the least trouble,” replied Clarkson, putting it 
in his inner waistcoat pocket and buttoning the flap 
deliberately over it. “But I am not going to hand it 
to you. It goes to the address of M. Gerard, for I have 
been in the service, and I know to whom a letter be- 
longs in transit. If he likes to hand it over to you, 
all right, but I do not advise your asking him for it.” 

“You will fight?” said the duke, frothing a little 
at the mouth like a panther whose dinner in the 
menagerie is delayed. 

“As much as you like, you bet!” returned Clark- 
son, working his jaw like an old sailor turning the 
quid. 


CHAPTER XIII 


A VARIATION OF THE DUEL A L' AMERICAINE 

“Well,” said the other, whom the tone of eagerness 
did not gratify, “when I shall have finished with the 
other, we will have it out together.” 

“The next day after, I presume?” 

“The next day, yes.” 

“Unfortunately I arc on time here,” observed Clark, 
son. “I want to clear out of this to-morrow even- 
ing. ”* 

“You will wait,” said the duke saucily. “In the 
meanwhile, go!” 

No sooner had he flung the order out as to a dog 
or a menial than he regretted it, so far was the 
American from looking like the kind of man who 
might be ordered about. 

“Look here,” said Clarkson calmly, “can^t you see 
by the blood in my eye what I have made up my 
mind to? I am not going to be defrauded by your 
fighting any Gerards before I have a go at you. 
Gerard might snap you in two, and if he spoils you, 
I should not have the glory of tackling one of the 
finest swordsmen in Paris — an amusement I want to 
tell the boys about, over the big pond. While, if 
you were to hurt him bad, you would cause irrepa- 

350 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


251 


table woes. If you believe I am thinking of his per- 
sonal felicity, you are away off. I am alluding to his 
scientific worth, and catch a Westener letting a brainy 
man be wiped out who can make a saving of twenty- 
five p. c. in the rendering of auriferous ore. No, sir, 
not this evening. Come, prove that you have grit 
even when you do not have things altogether your 
own way. I propose an American duel. No dust, no 
muss, no scaring up your friends for seconds, but a 
simple settlement without drawbacks. Got any 
shooting-irons handy? or stickers? Quite right — it is 
your lady's apartments and they would not be here. 
Your know-nothing tailors forgot the hip-pocket 
and the collar of this coat is too low down for a 
pistol, but I tell you what I have brought along — for 
you have some sand-baggers on the external boule- 
vards — this is the picker — ” and he drew from a secret 
pocket a long and terrible Spanish dagger-knife for 
which a Mexican “cutter” would have given an eye 
out of his head. “This is the me?iu\ we. will put out 
the light, throw the knife aside at random and the 
first that finds it, uses it on the other.” 

“Barbarian!” ejaculated Septmonts, rushing toward 
the bell-cord, but already the other had sprung before 
him with the flashing blade. 

“Hold your horses! ” interrupted he, in a low deep 
voice, as he frowned and his eyes spouted flame. “No, 
you don’t! no playing the noble duke and ringing up 
the flunkeys to cane me out — or, as true as I am 
‘Mad' Clarkson, I will kick you right straight through 
the whole house, before the whole gang and half^way 
to the Madeleine." 


252 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


An awkward pause ensued. Oh, if the room had 
not been so secluded! Then, a sudden thought oc- 
curred to the cornered nobleman, and showing his 
teeth, he hissed: “Very well. Monsieur, I will com- 
mence with you. “ 

“That’s talking. I guess I shall catch the train 
right slick. The next item on the programme is to 
secure the safety, before the authorities, of the sur- 
vivor. You have such a pestering band of worriers 
here when gentlemen ^have met to regulate their little 
divergencies. Luckily, a sheet of paper will do the 
trick, and here is the material. Write if you please 
in duplicate, for my hand is spoiled with the type- 
writers, and p’raps it would take too much precious 
time to seek them in this slow-paced capital! ‘For 
reasons not concerning the world which I quit, I 
leave it by the shortest cut. Let no one be held to 
account for my death, freely and even gladly admin- 
istered. Witness my own hand.’ Date and sign in 
your case, duke, with all the dourishes, and hand me 
the other for my splatter-dash. While you are get- 
ting that slung on the paper, I will see that we are 
shut in snug.” 

With a methodical step, he made the circuit of the 
apartment and tested to his satisfaction that they 
would be plunged in darkness when the lights were 
extinguished. 

Septmonts had recovered his tranquillity after the 
reflection and he wrote the dictation without altering 
the phrases. He signed one, and the American 
glanced over them both before affixing a bold signa- 




“‘Go!* shouted Clarkson, honorably shooting the table out 
from him.” — (p. 253.) 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


253 


ture in the Madisonian hand, which was Miss Van- 
ness’ peculiar caligraphy also, to the duplicate. 

“It is understood, then, that, if you are disabled, 
I can regain that letter,” said the duke, panting with 
a tigerish eagerness. 

“Just so. Will you put out the gas while I throw 
the knife at the third count of One, Two and Three?” 

“Would not this be fairer? shove that center-table 
against the wall, with the knife on it; it runs on 
castors. As you give the impulsion with your foot 
put out the gas with one hand — then let the best man 
get the knife and use it as best he may.” 

“I don^t care,” replied Clarkson, stationing himself 
by the round-table and laying the knife on it in the 
middle. Over his head gently shone the subdued 
light of the gaselier. 

“Ready?” he questioned. 

“Quite ready,” answered Septmonts, standing at 
a distance but preparing apparently to make a spring 
toward the point across the room where the table 
would be brought up against the wall. 

“Go!” shouted Clarkson honorably shooting the 
table out from him, and at the same time turning the 
gas off. 

In the complete darkness and the silence, the two 
men heard the soft swish of the ivory castors in the 
deep carpet until the table edge struck the wall, 
where the violent shock repulsed it a little. The 
heavy knife, set in m.otion by this stoppage, slid for- 
ward and fell on the floor. 

That fall was what saved Clarkson, for he instantly 


^54 


THE AMERICAN CiRL IN PARIS 


threw himself on the ground to reach the weapon, by 
a bound like a mountain-cat’s, long and low. Simul- 
taneously the room v/as illumined by a flash of fire 
and a sharp crack resounded. The duke had not 
changed his position, but, drawing a small pocket- 
pistol with which he had often resolved, in his cloudy 
days, to put an end to his life, treacherously fired at 
his antagonist. The bullet traversed the room about 
breast Iiigh, but we know why it failed to enter the 
living target. By the flame, the latter had caught 
sight of the fallen blade. He asked no more, but, 
with a whoop of joy which he must have learnt while 
captive of the Apaches, leaped upon the weapon. 
Septmonts had also seen him and felt a shrinking of 
the heart at his failure. Afraid to fire at random, as 
the pistol was a Devisme which held but two shots, 
he shifted his stand noiselessly to intrench himself 
behind a Sevres jardiniere on a stand, and waited for 
his opportunity. 

Clarkson might have evaporated into mist for all 
the token which he gave of his presence: not the 
cracking of a joint, which defect has often betrayed 
a large man to his foes, not the phosphorescent gleam 
of his eyes. A man had need of more nerve than had 
sufficed Septmonts in' his duels, to bear without a 
flutter this silence, for he divined that the foe was 
not quiet but creeping insensibly and steadily as an 
instrument of fate upon him, with all that intelli- 
gence of the borderer supplemented with the red- 
skin’s science of strategy. 

Like a boudoir in the extreme fashion, this was 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


255 


bristling wkh articles of bric-a-brac, and it 
seemed impossible that a stranger, six feet in height 
and large in bones if somewhat spare, could grope 
about it without demolishing an urn or a statuette, 
a gimcrack or a what-not laden with curios. 

Not a crash— not a sound — not a breath, but the 
duke, like a maniac to whom iiallucination had be- 
come reality in his reverse world, was sure that the 
enemy approached circuitously, gliding like a rattle- 
snake around all impediments, and would soon thrust 
that sharp steel out like the tongue of an adder. 
He felt like screaming a taunt or something to elicit 
a warning cry in reply — but it was too late. As 
he thought he perceived with his straining eye- 
balls, before which danced odd specks of light, some- 
thing like a pair of eyes, and leveled his pistol, he 
was seized round the body by two arms and somehow 
he was aware that Clarkson had taken the knife be- 
tween his teeth in order to master him thus securely. 
He fired the pistol but, so held, the bullet was use- 
lessly sent into the ceiling. 

“You are done for,” said the victor in a quiet tone, 
as if the transaction were a business one. “What 
a vicious little toad you are. They don’t seem 
to know you clean through in this section or they 
would vote me a testimonial for ridding them of you. 
You make love to a wife like mine! you?” he repeated 
with contempt that made the Frenchman writhe. 
“You ain’t good enough to tie to a stake in a swamp 
and tempt, tke alligators. It’s a public blessing to 
root you out and leave those young folks to spend a 


256 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


happy life right on till they are gran’ther and gran’^ 
mother among their chicks and biddies.” 

“Help! ” gasped the duke, crushed by the embrace, 
and fancying that he heard a hand on the door-knob. 

“Hush! ” but the word need not be said, for the duke 
felt one of the sturdy arms unwind and the point of 
a knife pierce his chest. “Mercy!” And with one of 
those efforts of which small but wiry men are capable 
of in extremity he tore one arm free and grasped the 
hand upon the knife. 

What was his redoublement of horror when he felt 
the under fingers twine within and upon his own 
like the feelers of an octopus, and gradually change 
place so that they held his down on the handle. He 
was holding the knife, but he was held in turn by the 
avenger. Thus impelled, it resumed the stroke, and 
thus the duke was compelled to stab himself. 

But to the last he struggled nervously, and suddenly 
the American uttered an execration which drowned 
the expiring groan of the last of the Septmonts. 

“Confound the tough bones — they have broken an ex- 
cellent knife worth a car-load of dukes!” such was the 
epitaph of Maximin des Septmonts. 


CHAPTER XIV 


BETTER LOVE COMES LATE THAN NEVER 

At the portals of the room where this tragical scene 
was transpiring, a sentinel was keeping watch whose 
presence was as singular as the rencounter within. 

It was the duchess. 

Thus posted in the antechamber, she prevented any 
intruder, but she had sent for her father, as the pro- 
longation of the explanation between the American 
and her husband increased her alarm. Three times 
she had started to flee, so strong was the emanation 
of horror from that room where a dread silence had 
succeeded the murmur of excited voices. Lastly, 
a faint gleam of ‘rosy light, that had filtered 
through the hanging and traced a line from the 
key-hole, went into eclipse. She heard no more; she 
dared not peep; she was glad that she heard nothing. 
Curiosity was dead within her before the certainty 
that a tragedy of the first import was enacted. A 
clock on the marble mantel was ticking with the feel- 
ingless beat of mechanism, and all its mocking mower 
told her, as he ceaslessly swung his gilded scythe was, 
that one of the moments which he reaped would be 
her destiny. They were planning, these two men, 
how to kill her beloved on the morrow. This Ameri- 
17 257 


258 THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 

can was an ally of her husband’s from the time when 
blood was to be spilt. Ah, she had read of the Wes- 
tern duelists enough to enlighten her. 

If she could only go away and let what was inevitable 
be accomplished; but the voice of her conscience was 
not to be stifled. The looker-on in such a case was 
guilty. If one of those men slew the other she would 
be his accomplice. 

Would her father never come? 

At last, she heard steps. But it was a woman, not 
a man who came into her presence. 

“Miss Vanness!” she exclaimed, having forgotten 
that hers should not be an unexpected call. 

The American was attired in a sang-de-boeuf walk- 
ing dress, trimmed with a lighter shade of red, with 
black lace and a black plume in her hat; the gory 
tint made the duchess shudder. 

“Why, did you not know that I should be on the 
spot?” said she in surprise and taking this movement 
as one of repulsion. “Mr. Clarkson sent me word that 
you and he wanted to talk to me here at once.” 

“But,” said the duchess, trembling and listening 
for the sound that might come from the boudoir, 
“since Mr. Clarkson wrote, something has happened 
which he did not foresee — nor I — nor you even, who 
seem to foresee so far.” 

“What do you mean?” demanded the American 
with signs of anxiety on her own part. 

“While the duke was explaining to Mr. Clarkson 
the reasons that he saw fit to give for a duel between 
him and M. Gerard, that which you brought about, 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


259 


madanie — Mr. Clarkson, who thought these reasons 
neither sufficient nor honorable, suddenly took up the 
defense for me, for my father, for M. Gerard, and so 
hotly that at the present moment — ah! ” she shrieked. 

Although faintly, they both heard the first of the 
two pistol-shots fired by the Duke des Septmonts. 

“That’s a gun,*’ remarked Reina, without being 
disturbed. “Do you mean to tell me that they are 
fighting together — the principal with his second? You 
French are the originals!” 

“Pray do not laugh,” said the duchess. “One of 
them may be dying now?” and she tottered toward 
the door. 

“Pooh! that was only a popgun,” sneered Miss 
Vanness; “Clarkson carries heavier metal than that.” 

“But, madame, we must prevent this duel!” 

“Rather a one sided duel — more like an assassina- 
tion — you see I know your dukes. Why should we stay 
it?” 

“I do not want either of them killed in my behalf,” 
faltered Catherine, trying to open the door. 

“How does it concern you? It is more my business, 

I conceive, as both the fellows are sweet upon me. 
But they are full-grown men and I judge that they 
know how to manage their business without any wo- 
men’s aid. No more can join in, as the croupiers say 
in the gaming-houses, and the ball must not be 
touched until it stops rolling. You wanted to be 
free, did you not?” 

With wringing hands, pale as death, which was 
stalking up and down in the next room like Mephis- 


26 o 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


topheles between Faust and Valentine, the poor young 
woman moaned at the door, unable to lift her voice to 
call for its opening. 

The second shot cracked, and she started with an- 
other shiver of horror. 

“Two,” counted Miss Vanness. “That’s better — 
I mean, that is more like a duel. You are quite 
right to want to be free, and I warrant that one 
of those shots has done the deliverance. Clarkson 
is hot-headed and he goes off the handle with 
little provocation, but you have no notion how lucky 
he is in his blunders! It looks to me as if you had 
been praying to the providence which has pulled the 
globe through many a deep rut during ages, and is not 
going to be satisfactorily superseded by any, of the 
new gods that the moderns are trying to put up for 
candidature. Providence has heard you, and has 
made use of me and mine while I flattered myself that 
I was working this game beautifully all by myself. 
It is justice, even if I am the under dog. In the part I 
have played against fate, I always knock under when 
the throw is against me. I fear it — it is for you; let 
us discuss the matter no farther.” 

The door opened while she spoke — the duchess fell 
on her knees; there loomed up before her as she drew 
aside the hangings, the somber figure of Clarkson. 

Miss Vanness gave him one look and no doubt read 
on his impassive features what was unintelligible to 
the Frenchwoman, for she exclaimed with a kind of 
gratitude: “What did I tell you? Clarkson pulls out 
every time. You are a widow!” 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


261 


The two women, with a curiosity very pardonable, 
sought to pry into the room, but it was too dark, and 
they could- barely perceive a form on the floor half- 
wrapped in the velvet cover off a table, which, by its 
vague resemblance to a human one, sent a shudder 
through them. 

“My dear Reina, “ said Clarkson gravely, as he 
handed his fellow-countrywoman the letter in the 
blank wrapper about which the duke had so fatally 
blundered, “kindly pass this on to Madame la Duch- 
esse, as she might feel some repugnance to receiving 
it from my hand, and she must have it restored to 
her. This was certainly the last wish of her husband; 
he had no time to write it with his brief farewelTto 
her and the world at large.” 

“His farewell?” 

“Just so,” returned Clarkson tranquilly; “I did my 
best to hold up my end of the argument but he over- 
ruled me, and he put an end to the discussion and his 
life. I never saw a man more bent on his doom. 
After writing the testament in question, which you 
will find on the writing-table, he fired two shots and 
then ran a knife he borrowed from me without my 
leave, I assure you, into some vital part. All his 
coups ^ I have heard say, were not so clean.'' 

Miss Vanness seemed to have a great weight off her 
mind. She gave the letter to the lady without any 
reluctance, saying: 

“I told Dr. Ramonin that, if I lost this game, I 
should do it handsomely. I have lost and I must pay 
up. Through me this marriage was arranged — through 


262 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


me it is canceled. Now, Clarkson, you are a fine fel- 
low, but we must pull up stakes and make tracks. 
Yes, I am going home with you,” she said, to his in- 
finite joy. “I have had enough of this Europe of 
theirs — it is too small for my kind of woman. Besides, 
can’t you understand that I ought never to have ap- 
plied for a divorce? Bless you, I am in love with you 
again. Let us get out of this hole — I stifle!” 

“Well, you don’t want to get out no livelier than 
I,” replied the executioner of the Duke des Sept- 
monts, as he almost gayly offered his arm to his re- 
gained wife, and the two departed, leaving the duch- 
ess still on her knees at the doorway, praying. 

Dr. Ramonin called in time to succor the poor wo- 
man, a prey to a fever which had to be fought in 
time. Asked by the commissary of police to re- 
port on the cause of the death of the master of the 
house, he performed his task “with pleasure,” to 
chronicle his slip of the tongue in his satisfaction 
that death had sundered the bonds upon his young 
friend. Mauriceau grieved no more. He was not quite 
cured of his aristocratic penchant, for he hinted that 
M. Deshaltes was in the matrimonial market, when 
his daughter was entitled to lay aside her weeds. 
After she had chosen in another direction, and be- 
came Madame Gerard, he was heard to lament the 
duke as not so bad a bargain, all things considered, 
but the old man was not so sharp as in younger years, 
and nobody heeded his tales of when he lived among 
the peers. 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


263 


The newly wedded couple went on an American 
tour that Catherine might form a clear idea of what 
her husband had gone through, to obtain a fortune 
which would buy a score of dukes at the standard of 
Septmonts, but they did not go near Vannessa, and 
they saw nothing of Clarkson or his wife. 

Less than two years after, when the engineer — re- 
tired to the lovely suburb of Villas-Gerard, built by 
him and named in his honor — was mayor, a child was 
born to him and his wife, who looked so young in 
her happiness that one could hardly believe that she 
was ever the widow of the Duke de Septmonts. In 
accordance with an old idea, the inhabitants were 
consulting over the form in which they should offer a 
testimonial to the mayoress for the auspicious event, 
when their doubts were set at rest by the following 
singular cablegram: 

"Vannessa, New Mexico. — Hearing that the Mayor- 
ess of Les Villas-Gerard has happily been accouchde 
of a babe, the mayor of this city, who has peculiar 
reasons to be grateful toward France for hospitality 
to him and his wife, nee Miss Vanness, has the honor 
to beg the town authorities to accept as a homage to 
their chief magistrate’s wife, a little token of our na- 
tive product and manufacture. ” 

Ten days subsequently, a large packing-case, of 
unusual weight for its dimensions, was opened in the 
town-council rooms, and to the delight of all the good 
fathers of the borough, there was unswathed from 
wrappers of ramie and cotton cloth, a magnificent 


264 


THE AMERICAN GIRL IN PARIS 


bassinette of wrought gold, embellished with precious 
stones of the country, perhaps not in the most refined 
taste, but worth more money than the recipients 
dared to calculate closely. 

We do not say that the infant of Lucien and Cath- 
erine slept any the more soundly in this gorgeous cra- 
dle, but certain it is that the fond and proud parents 
exhibited the double treasure to their friends with a 
prayer in the heart for the felicity of the American 
Girl. 


THE END. 


DANGEltOUS DELIGHTS. 


12m'o. 440 Pages, Illustrated. Paper Cover, 


I N this admirable translation of the great French author’s masterpiece of 
fiction, is preserved all the sparkle and life of the original French. 
“Dangerous Delights,” in the peculiarly bewitching style of the modern 
French novelists, rehearses the story of a young French artist who woos and 
happily marries one of the sweetest little women in all the world, ana c! 'ir 
wedded life is one unruffled sea of connubial bliss, until, in an evil hour, the 
happy couple visit Nice, that city of vanity and voluptuous pleasure. There 
the young artist, flattered by the attentions of the great, invited into the 
sensual social swim of the ‘ ‘ best society,” in the giddy whirl of “ dangerous 
delights ” loses his moral balance, becomes intoxicated with the sweets of 
forbidden fruit, and delivers himself up, body and soul, a hopeless devotee 
to the goddess of pleasure. Wife, home, purity — everything which makes 
life worth living, is sacrificed for the sake of a voluptuous beauty, who, when 
her triumph is complete, throws him aside like a squeezed orange. 

The allurements of pleasurable, voluptuous vice, an^ their terrible, inevi- 
table denouement, are pictured by a master-hand, “ in thoughts that breathe, 
and words that burn.” 

Every young man in the land might read the book with profit, as well as 
pleasure. 


For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, or will be sent by the pub- 
lishers on receipt of price. 


DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO., Publishers. 




• r V* . ./ x^r*- 

4o .^^•.- ■ 

f .J»w • . •% J -1*“ 


* \.V.- ’ - ' ^ - 


V ^ :1ir 


I , -. 


I • '* 


* v*i 









^ ^ : W • r. »iil • 

^^•• - ^>,::;/ ^ ^ 

r «r ♦ ^ ^ ^ ^ 




L\ ■' 


t 


* ^ 


♦ ^ 


v< Ji' • i 

r*jr^.. V-.. 


■% 


..-.IP 


rr, 

I 

/ V 


• 4. CV 


^ - . - ^ ♦. J 

#. Vtv^'. 


4* 

^ • 


^ r 


•.■V 


r ' 

. “ "r » 1’ : '•jt' 

■H . A. 


• » 

■'% 


A.r^., 






t ^ wT'" •* ■ 


^ w 

IV.. r^. 


• *•* 


•1 ' 
' V 






> 

i>- 


/T" • 


'A 

ft * •• ■- .’ 


I. .*» 

^ '■ • '■ 


r» \ 


* ■. ■ 


T 


A 

• W ' vt. -1, 

.T'. tf- . 




■'‘- - /, 


jV-'a. ■* 


4t 


t 


>■ 1 ^ 


.* * * 
/ 


r 


* ' ' x 




^ ;; ' . 




, > 




• ' * . **v.. ,f^» / 
c > '-'N 


t--' 


. t 

* 



f -' ,*^ 
.4 


, •-: t 


■ *V ‘ ,, 


-■» * 


•f 




* . 0 


tV'* 


/ 

^ % r 

T •>(«. i 


•• •♦ 

'» * I 

n' 

/ 


' V.xv • ,' > 

Vr ..*>» 1 -A- 


a;. • 


% . 


’. 4 


1 1 


<l 


* t 

fti. 


V. V- 

‘ '■- ■".^s 

t 


Qy: 


yi 




i « 


1^- 




— ^ h .- ■ 

j. " » 


r' 


■-: x:. 

< • > .. 


* '• 4 




• ■ , • « ''V 

. ' .*• -Mi. • . r » 

• .."T • y . 


*4 




I . 


A » 


. .• X 


Vi 


• • 




ft '. . \ 


V< 


-'•V-j^ ■* ’ 


»i 

. r' \ 


* I 


r 

- ■ - '• 

# - •* •• •• 


%» • »■ 


t - 


■f 






^.C 




v 

w 

. t 


y :r 


/, 




• • 






■' V - 

'x'- 




• •» 



b 

.-’v 


‘ r-'"ic I*'--' ';- 

.It V . jciA? Vi* ■». *-. 


>\ »*<.<. X 






!> 


-4 

. \ 


I • ' ■» 








• * 

* *V • . 


' / ;? V /. ^ .:^' : : x:-/ • 

•*; • . . * ■ - . - 


«p% 





k ■■ w;¥r'iW)3l 

jy 

-■'i '//' 

:>V. 


»V. •■’/ ■ •■ ■ vi'i ! ; ! ^H, t'. ■ ^ :}y ■ 

SA f .A-,, '•>^«^ ; Vf',jHgi|»J,^'.\., i 'iW* 'V 

... ’ A 


' , i - ■• ’ ^ •ij 

, :r. I 

®v- ' ,,] 1 •-•» ' 

. ; . : - . ' T ' . '■ ^ , ' ■ V 


) 


ft '?■ ’■ ’ V / ' '\ ■ '*' ■ 

”'V ‘ " 

Wmhk^ i ■ 





L E Je’32 






II 




y 




W 


i H 


? ah 


. * I 




1 > 




CTf 'A\ li\^i 

jrOi.uA' 4 




U‘ •> 




m 










• i 








i)«?» 


V 


\v^ 


t ii/ / :. 


' 'I 


• » ) 


>/' 




'f 




' 5 


; * 


I 


?Ui 


I 


n 


I) 


V 


V > 




Iv 


' I c'l 


r 1/ 


*^ii 


k’ ’ ' 


4 




♦ i 


if 


\ 


rj 


ur 


)>; 


I • 


V. 


4 


' K 


1 I - t 




p 


».■ 


IT' 


J V. 




iKy 


y\f 


»»* I j 


1^ 


/ 




f'' j 






f‘ ' j 






^ » 




V*' 

X^: 


ro 


civ. 


M. 




♦ V A 




fif" 


*4»' 


•fj. 




‘>L 


•1, 1 




• \’ 


r>i !■/' j'v- 


\ » 


^ I > 




.#<■ 


- 


•t f. 


4 n 

.,C 


ij: 


1. 




1^; 


k . 


^ \ 


‘I 


'i» 


{I 




.u • 

■RHM^ 


.111 


< » 


f V > 




^If 


. Si^ • : I ^v'\’:V 


.'..I 




> . • if •« 


« 




.3W' '•' '4>Au.fn_ “ Hm 




iMi 




it 










. f ' ‘ « . J 




J 

'r/ .v 


1 1 




[W 


h*4 


C. ^• 






K. 


^ * }. * 

'Vi'" 




f *2 


u 


r* 


t V» 


; ;j)R 


If * »' 


■ , 


■ ' f IV ^ 


> » 




s 


'A 


■fl 


'■/i 




^7 


• / 




M 


• / 


I . 


rr- ^ 






I u *• 


M' 




\t 


\ > 


» », 


i 


O, ' 




•l* 


. »■ 


^7- ‘V 


h >• 

1 / ^dhA 


». r 


* >, 


ft 


K 


4 I 


“I? 




> f 


.-w-t.', »» ' 


W 1 


W 




41 - 


■ tV ’ i 


■i 


N'3ii 


« * ■> 




( rft 


f • 




''1^ 


f'l 




I 




If* 


r M 





